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Am in VIC – I joined my OC committee and also I and other owners have recently lodged a case at VCAT.
I received a committee meeting notice and agenda but both explicitly stated that I was not allowed to attend this meeting because one of 2 substantive agenda items was a discussion on the VCAT proceeding. The other agenda item was acceptance of meeting minutes that I had challenged in writing twice over a three month period.
The meeting is an online one.
Is there any legal basis for my exclusion from attending this meeting? Should I at least have been allowed to attend and observe?
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You should be allowed to attend and then when the item in which you have an interest is being considered you leave the meeting for that item. That is standard practice. They can’t exclude you from the entire meeting.
Hi KayteE,
I am from Vic, and I had been in a similar situation before.I would ask them the following awkward questions:
1. In NSW it was written in laws that any unit owner can attend Committee Meetings, why not here? Vic. OC Act requires all Committee minutes to be recorded and available for inspection by unit owners (sections 114(4), 115 OCA).
2. As the Committee Meeting helps avoid calling a Special General Meeting on those agenda items, could they exclude you from the Special General Meeing?
3. If you have the number please force the calling of a Special General Meeting with exactly the same agenda. Then they cannot exclude you from the SGM.I have the suspicion that OCA was vague on unit owners’ right to attend Committee Meeting to make Lawyers busy and to give unfair advantage to Committee and Managing Corporation. It is similar to the kind of Legalized Corruption in QLD (Financial Review, 2020 August 01).
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely:. Please help fight for the rights of unit owners against abuse of power by Committees.
The idea that you might be excluded from a meeting that discusses an issue in which you have some personal or financial interest is deeply flawed. Don’t all the other members of the committee have a personal or financial interest in the outcome too?
I was just reading a VCAT ruling the other day where the Members said that they didn’t think an owner should have been excluded from the meeting where they discussed his actions against them at the tribunal as it wasn’t a conflict of interest any more for the owner concerned than for the committee members.
On the other hand, they also noted that they were not prepared to say that there were no situations where it might be appropriate to exclude the owner from the meeting.
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