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Was very impressed with the Minister at our meeting. He seems genuinely passionate about strata reform and the discussion document coming out next week is going to have some real bombshells in it (I’m sworn to secrecy but it’s very real and mostly good).
We’ll be all over it like white on rice when it emerges blinking into the cold light of strata cynicism. Until then, watch this space
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This is a weird one, alright and I’m not sure if it stands up to much scrutiny. For a start, an individual owner can’t legitimately present themselves as expressing the views of all owners – they can say they do but they’d have to back it up at some point.
You can’t even issue edicts telling people not to tell lies. You can tell lies if you want – you just have to be prepared to face the consequences – defamation actions, fraud investigations, eternal damnation – if you do.
It sounds like a ‘gagging” motion which, firstly the chairmen shouldn’t even allow as it is incompetent in so many ways, not least that it is unenforceable.
If this is a clumsy attempt to get the majority of owners to express the view that they don’t agree with other owners, then that’s what it should say. But the ruling group has to be very careful when they start using proxies (as I’m sure they will) to control debate and restrict the flow of information.
A quiet word with your strata manager should see this knocked off the agenda.
But if I were in your shoes, I would think your opponents had just kicked a massive own goal, firstly by displaying their basic lack of understanding of strata law and secondly by inviting the question “what is it that you don’t want us to hear.”If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
Even if the EC or Owners Corp weren’t aware, I am advised that the Owners Corp’s legal responsibility for common property trumps the ‘buyer beware’ principal of property purchases. In other words, it’s an Owners Corp cost. The fact that they were aware merely means they need a stern talking to at your next AGM.
Downlights are becoming very popular in apartments (because of low ceilings). The Owners Corp needs to put through a by-law that says that downlights and their fittings must be installed by approved electricians and that all future maintenance and costs are attributable to the lot owner, regardless of whether they received permission or not.
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The (in)famous “Who’s responsible …” document says that the main stopcock to a unit is OC responsibility but leaking pipes within the unit are individual lot owners’ responsibility. Pick the bones out of that!
Paradiso’s SM seems to have taken a sensible view on this for obvious reasons. If the stopcock is the last chance to turn off water coming into the apartment before it hits your system, then its Common Property. If, however, you have a secondary turn-off tap under the kitchen sink (for, say, fitting and removing dishwashers etc) it will be lot owners’ responsibility.
You can access the “Who’s responsible for what” document HERE but be aware it is a guide and not the law. You can amend and adopt it as a by-law for your building but even then, it’s not set in concrete as this paper by our legal sponsor Makinson D’apice suggests. Have a look HERE and whiz down to page 10 – it makes very interesting reading.
That said, the “Who’s responsible” document will be the first thing strata managers and CTTT adjudiacators look at when there’s a dispute so it does have considerable influence.
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@giri said:2. previous input by jimmyT advised that if motion was voted on at EC meeting, I couldn’t put an amendment to it at the AGM.
No, you have misunderstood my response and I think that’s because you misunderstand the use of the word ‘amendment’ which has quite a specific meaning when it comes to meetings.
You can put forward a new motion that countermands a previous decision of the EC – that’s not an amendment, it’s a new motion. This is a valid process because Owners Corp (AGM) decisions are superior to EC decisions.
FYI: An amendment, in the context of a meeting, is a change proposed to a motion before or while it is being discussed. You can’t amend a decision that has been made – but you can propose a motion to make a new decision that differs from the previous one.
By the way, I think all the jiggery-pokery over how many quotes to get and from whom misses the point. The Owners Corp has an absolute responsibility to fix common property. If they do it cheaply or badly, they have to do it again properly. Quick non-fixes by an incompetent tradesman are just throwing good money after bad and this should be forcibly pointed out at the meeting where this is being discussed.
If I were you I would propose an amendment to the motion you have mentioned that simply says the Owners Corp accepts the two assessment that have been given and gets on with repairing the problem.
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@giri said:
1. how does one move a valid amendment to something that was a motion on last ECM meeting?
You can’t. The meeting has been and gone. An amendment to a motion needs to be made when the issue is being discussed. All you can do now is ask someone on the Executive Committee to move a new motion at the next meeting or to challenge the previous meeting’s minutes as a true record (unlikely to succeed).
2. how do I get the amendment to this ECM motion on the agenda of the imminent AGM.
This would be a new motion to rescind the previous decision at the EC meeting and must be given to the secretary in writing before the agenda of the AGM is sent out.
3. if the motion is already on the agenda for the imminent AGM, how do I move a valid amendment to it? (not sure if it will be on the agenda of the AGM – i haven’t received the agenda yet).
You can move an amendment at the general meeting provided it doesn’t substantially alter the nature of the motion. For instance, if there was a motion to ban barbecues, you could move an amendment to make it only a ban on solid fuel or gas barbecues but not electric ones. This would be allowed because owners will have had a chance to consider the whole issue. However, you could not move an amendment to also ban, say, portable air conditioners as owners haven’t had a chance to consider that before the meeting.
There is no need to move a motion to reject a motion that’s on the agenda since rejection is also an option in any vote. Your problem then is getting enough votes against the motion which means stirring up your fellow owners BEFORE the meeting. Your chairman will probably come to the meeting with a raft of proxies and you need to have enough owners already in your camp if you want to overturn any motion that’s on the agenda.
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@Slapped said:
I get the impression the insurance company is not interested as it is only about $1600.
The insurance company may have made the decision that it’s cheaper and easier to extract the money from the Owners Corp by way of premiums than it is to run a case against your neighbour.Not much you can do about that except getting the Owners Corp to refuse to pay – and it sounds like you have no support there.
If the Insurers won’t come to the party, your choices are to run with this yourself by taking it to the CTTT (on which grounds I really don’t know) or let it go and save yourself a lot of needless grief.
Speaking of needless grief, I notice you had used your real name as your username, despite my requests elsewhere that posters shouldn’t do that. By identifying yourself, you are identifying your neighbours whom you have accused of some pretty serious stuff. I don’t have the time or money to defend other people’s defamation cases so I have gone in and changed it.
This is a general request, PLEASE folks, use a bit of sense when you are chosing a username. Using your own name is just asking for trouble that you might welcome but I really don’t need.
The Sofa of Anonymity is there to be hidden behind for a reason – please use it.
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His ‘ming’ is merciless. As for his mind, however, His department are about to release their discussion paper upon which the next round of strata law changes will be based.
I’ll reserve judgement until then but I have to say that he has been the most engaged of all the ministers that there have been at Fair Trading since I started writing about it.
The proof will be in the pudding.If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.
@FlatChatFan said:So what can be done?
Good question – and I would respond by asking what it is that Slapped wants.
Does he or she want the Owners Corp to do the right thing, do they want them to do the best thing (not always the same) or do they want to punish the miscreant?
If this were my strata, I would be asking, first of all that a letter be sent to the Insurance company asking if they were satisfied with the outcome, if they planned to take any further action and if this legal action had affected premiums?
Depending on the response – any combination of no to the first one and yes to the second and third – I would be asking the OC to agree not to support any insurance claim for the court costs and to support any claim by the insurance company against the individual concerned.
Just because the Owners Corp agrees not to take action doesn’t mean the insurers won’t, so this agreement merely ties the Owners Corp to defend the indefensible and accept the consequences.
However, all that is very airy-fairy and there is one action I would take as a matter of priority – and it’s a motion that could easily be added to the agenda of the EGM – to declare the EC seat of the slapping member vacant (in other words, sack them).
Any kind of violence is completely unacceptable in a strata plan and if the EC member has admitted they slapped another resident, that is all the reason anyone needs for sacking them from the EC. This is a no-brainer, actually and if the slapper admitted in court that they did this, they should have been asked to resign from the EC as soon as they did.
Getting back to the proposed motion, in any sensible and aware Owners Corp, the motion to endorse the alleged fraud would be bounced. So what you really need to do is to make the other owners aware of what is going on and what their liabilities might be both collectively and individually.
I would check the terms of the Strata Insurance very carefully for exclusions (and I’m pretty sure physical assaults would be one of them, if only by implication) and then send out a message to all the other owners explaining what their personal liabilities might be if they are found to have endorsed the perpetration of a fraud.
It’s one of the ironies of strata living that majority of owners think “the strata” is some amorphous organisation that doesn’t really have any connection with them. In fact we are all part of our Owners Corporation and our responsibilities for Owners Corp decisions (or lack of them) are absolute.
I can’t tell how far that would go if owners endorsed a genuine fraud – and I’m guessing neither can most owners. But I’m pretty sure that if you put enough owners in enough doubt about what their liabilities might be if they buy into this alleged fraud, they might (and should) be worried enough to kill this motion stone dead.
Meanwhile, I’m passing this on to our legal and insurance contacts to ask what they think.
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On the other hand, this story in the Herald doesn’t look too clever. Actually, this has a whiff of insider political back-stabbing. I’m supposed to be meeting the Minister this week – I’ll ask him.
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@excathedra said:
Based on Slapped‘s posting, this looks like fraud! If the insurance company take notice of what has been sent to them and don’t take action, perhaps they deserve to be ripped off.I f only it was a s simple as that. I think you might find that the premiums are affected by legal claims which means everyone is suffering as a consequence of this Strata Slap. But I have to assume that the EC managed to persuade the insurer that while the incident was between two individuals, it had some element of EC/owner issues.
However, if they lied, then it would be a frud and, before anyone asks, the individuals who perpetrated it would probably not be covered by their EC insurance.
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@chak said:
Does it mean only the original tiles on the walls adjoining other Lots in the bathroom are considered CP? Original tiles on dividing walls within the unit are not CP?
What happened if the Developer re-tiled over the original tiles instead of removing the old tiles?
Only the tiles on common property walls are generally considered common property.
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@watchman said:
While I was moving into my new rented flat, the agent sent me an email to my work computer at 3PM advising me that he was carrying an annual fire inspection at 7am the next day. I did not open the email until the next morning when I was back at work. How much notice should he give and is he breaching the lease and is there anything that can be done to stop him entering the flat on some pretext or other without giving proper notice.The landlord is allowed to enter the premises as and when required to fulfill their legal obligations for health and safety checks (Like fire checks) but they still have to give you two clear days notice each time they plan to do so.
Have a look at the TenantsNSW fact sheet on tenants’ privacy HERE.
That web page also has a link to a strongly worded letter you can download, adapt and send that outlines how they have breached the Tenancy Act (and the terms of your lease) and warns that any repetition will lead to you talking them to the CTTT for compensation.
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@That Crazy Swede said:
What a pity the NSW Minister for Fair Trading has been caught out (today’s Sydney Morning Herald, iPad edition at least).Whilst defending himself, I certainly hope he will have the time to finish his extensive review of the strata system. Lord knows it needs it.
Right now, that’s an allegation, not a proven fact. But I too hope he is not distracted – Tony Roberts is the very first Fair Trading Minister on my eight-year watch to seem prepared to get to grips with the complexities of strata issues. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, my politics are somewhere to the left of loony.
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@kiwipaul said:
Can an OC decision (at the AGM say) be later reversed by an EC decision at a later date OR Would it require a OC vote to reverse the original OC decision. This sounds the most logical ans but hey it’s strata so who knows
It depends. The Owners Corp is the superior body to the EC but decisions of the EC are taken as decisions of the Owners Corp for the sake of just getting things done. For instance the Owners Corp might decide not to undertake certain work because it was too expensive but the EC might agree to it later when the price was right.
The Act is quite clear on the demarcation … up to a point (see below). The EC can’t countermand decisions that MUST be made by the Owners Corp in a general meeting – like by-laws and special resolutions. And the EC can’t make decisions that Owners Corp has specifically told it not to make – any such decisions would probably be declared invalid if challenged at the CTTT. Finally, if the Owners Corp and the EC disagree, the Owners Corp wins.
What that means is, if the EC makes a decision that it hasn’t been forbidden from making but which goes against the will of the majority, the signatures of 25 percent of the owners can call an AGM where the decision can be reversed and, in all likelihood, the EC would be sacked (you’d think).
Any EC can defy the wishes of the majority of owners – many do – but only until that is challenged or they face their day of reckoning at a general meeting
21 Executive committee’s decisions to be decisions of owners corporation
(1) A decision of an executive committee is taken to be the decision of the owners corporation, subject to subsection (4).
(2) However, the following decisions may not be made by the executive committee:
(a) a decision that is required by or under any Act to be made by the owners corporation by unanimous resolution or special resolution or in general meeting,
(b) a decision on any matter or type of matter that the owners corporation has determined in general meeting is to be decided only by the owners corporation in general meeting.
(3) An owners corporation may in general meeting continue to exercise all or any of the functions conferred on it by this Act or the by-laws even though an executive committee holds office.
(4) Despite any other provision of this Act, in the event of a disagreement between the owners corporation and the executive committee, the decision of the owners corporation prevails.
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