Netstrata scandal: feeding frenzy looms in strata war

This year is going to be huge in strata in NSW. The changes have already begun with new regulations on strata managers’ commissions and transparency about relationships with suppliers and developers, as of this week.

Next, wholesale changes to NSW strata laws will soon be debated and we’ll see what survives after invested politicians and vested interests have had their say.

And maybe, just maybe, we will see the possibly redacted results of NSW Fair Trading’s McGrathNicol independent inquiry into the Netstrata scandal surface, about nine months late (and counting).

Competing forces

There are many competing forces pulling in different directions on that report, like Tasmanian devils ripping apart roadkill in their collective feeding frenzy.

One group, owners and potential buyers, wants to know the facts so they can be better informed about their choices of strata managers, now and in the future.

Fair Trading wants to bolster confidence in the strata system, presumably by rapping appropriate knuckles but without too much negative information destroying the industry’s credibility altogether.

Strata Community Association (NSW), the strata managers’ professional body, would probably like a couple of scapegoats to be identified and dealt with quickly and quietly, preferably without any of its senior members, under whose watch this occurred, being tarred with the same brush.

Strata managers at the coal face would like to be allowed to get on with being strata managers without every action, decision and piece of advice being scrutinised for dubious behaviour, real or imagined.

And the media will have to look to its laurels. Some of us are seen as part of the problem, accused of propagating clickbait, fake news and malicious bias. Others toe the SCA party line.

Either way, until the report is published, the strata management industry will be at war with itself. They say the first casualty of war is the truth, and it’s certainly the facts that are the roadkill in this scenario.

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Jimmy-T

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