This has become a standard response from strata managers and it is tantamount to SCA Victoria acting as a cartel. A contract is a two way agreement. If your strata manager says they have to use the SCA contract to maintain their SCA membership, then that’s their problem, not yours (except if you really, really want to keep the same strata manager). If you strike out or amend any of the items in the contract, the contract is still valid, unless the strata manager refuses to sign it. In which case, on principle, I would say “thanks for your service” and show them the door but not before finding a strata manager with a spine or a sense of decency.
Here are some statistics for you:
Number of strata managers who have been chucked out of SCA Vic for allowing their contracts to be changed = 0
Number of strata schemes in Victoria saddled with unfair strata management contracts = X*
*X = number of strata schemes in Victoria with strata managers.
Things won’t change until the people paying the bills start demanding change. Strata managers won’t demand a change in contracts that favor them to a massive extent until they start losing business.
All said, your most fundamental problem is that you have a government that doesn’t give a flying fajita about strata owners and a Press that has a giant “too-hard” basket labelled strata.
Just over 20 years ago my partner Sue Williams and a few other disgruntled strata owners and professionals got together and formed the Owners Corproration Network. Now it has a seat at the table when the whole issue of strata laws is discussed in NSW (leading to the law changes that came in at the beginning of this month, among others).
What works in the dodgy dealers’ favour is that strata owners are terrified of damaging the value of their properties through bad publicity. But these days, negative publicity in the media isn’t even yesterday’s fish and chip paper, it’s this morning’s cat video. Get organised, get noisy and you might effect change.