Scotty,
I can’t see the phrase “at the commencement of the meeting” anywhere in the Act (for “non-large” strata schemes), only “at or before the meeting”, so I interpret it literally.
Although many SMs state it your way for their own convenience.
Your argument makes sense in one respect – it’s no good keeping a proxy in your back pocket if it means the meeting will be adjourned due to lack of quorum.
But if a meeting is adjourned due to lack of quorum, surely the first thing the Chairman does on re-convening is to re-count the voters+proxies so he knows whether he can start the meeting or has to wait half an hour.
And the whole purpose of adjourning the meeting was to obtain a quorum, so why not accept new proxies as well as new voters?