@Wirihana said:
… since I last wrote on this topic I have had the opportunity to consult with a Fair Trading legal and technical expert, and I can now clarify a few points mentioned in previous postings:1. An EC can ONLY convene an EGM by holding a properly convened EC meeting with agenda, vote and minutes. A telephone or email vote or an informal meeting is not permitted.
2. This function can NOT be delegated to a strata manager (despite what your beloved Strataman says, sorry Jimmy!)
Setting aside your sarcasm, it depends which function you mean. It’s true that the Strata Manager can’t just decide to call an EGM, but they can, acting as secretary under delegated powers, respond to an appropriate signed request from 25 percent of owners.
And, I firmly believe, despite the opinion of your Fair Trading “expert” – which cites no legislation and quotes no part of the Strata Act or regulations – that decisions made at an EGM that was called by informal agreement of the EC but was otherwise compliant with the regulations in terms of the issuing of agendas and minutes, would stand (for reasons you yourself have stated).
This website and the related newspaper column have dined out for years on the misinformed opinions of Fair Trading employees who turn out to be no better equipped to give definitive and legally binding answers than you or I.
Show me a case where the decisions of an informally agreed but otherwise kosher EGM have been scrubbed because the EC didn’t have a proper meeting and I will dance at your wedding (which is more than I did at my own).
4. The legislation does not have a definition of the “first meeting” when it comes to proxies but Fair Trading takes the view that participation is more important than exclusion, so if proxies are delivered within the required time period before an adjourned meeting, that meeting should be considered the “first meeting” and they should be accepted.
This is an incredible – and by that I mean, I don’t believe it – exercise in semantics. Let’s be absolutely clear on this: If an owner tried to use proxies that were too late for the initial meeting and then didn’t bother to have them updated for the second meeting and they were used to pass a contentious issue, the losing side would quite rightly drive a truck through the loopholes this created at NCAT and, I hasten to add, the expert from Fair Trading who offered this opinion would not be party to the decision. There is a reason there is no definition in the Act of what constitutes a “First Meeting” in this context and that’s because there is only one possible meaning for the phrase. The form asks proxy providers to put a date on the form and says it must be presented 24 hours before the first meeting to which it applies. What other possible interpretation could there be?
All that aside, I fear we are straying into Bush Lawyer Land with all this stuff. The most important thing from your post is that your agitations have led the EC to prompt a review of your pet by-laws. Surely that is the right way to get things done properly and everything else – mistakes and missteps included – is just taffeta.
This is what the Act says:
31 When general meetings of owners corporation are required to be held
(2) A general meeting of an owners corporation (in this clause referred to as an extraordinary general meeting), which is not an annual general meeting, may be convened by the executive committee at any time.
(3) The secretary of an executive committee … must convene an extraordinary general meeting as soon as practicable after receiving a requisition for such a meeting signed by one or more persons entitled to vote in respect of one or more lots, the unit entitlement or the sum of the unit entitlements of which is at least one-quarter of the aggregate unit entitlements.