Your strata manager needs to go back to strata manager school.
First of all, there should have been nominations established at the AGM, which the strata manager should have checked against the roll.
Then he or she should have declared nominations closed and called for a vote on the number of members that the owners want to be on the committee.
That number, or the lack thereof, will determine what happens next.
The two wrongly nominated members of the committee are not members. That is a fact of life – if they complain, well, maybe they should have done some research before presenting themselves for office. The law is the law.
Now, assuming that the SM followed procedure and asked for a vote on how many members the committee should have, that number stands.
If it was seven, you now have five seats filled and two vacant, and this is where it gets interesting Section 35 (2) of the Act says: “A strata committee may [my emphasis] appoint a person eligible for election as a member to fill a vacancy in the office of a member of the strata committee … Any person so appointed holds office, subject to this section, for the balance of his or her predecessor’s term of office.”
I emphasise the word “may” as I believe there is no compulsion to do so. If three out of your five active members decide they don’t want either or both of the invalid nominees to join the committee – or if they want someone else entirely who would have been valid for election – then they can decide on that basis. There are vacancies and they can fill them with whomever they want.
On the other hand, if proper procedure was not followed, and a number of seats on the committee was not agreed, then you could be in even more of a mess. My advice in that case would be to say that the five nominees were valid, so that is the committee. The owners corp has not said they want more than five so if anyone wants to challenge this at NCAT, let them.
This is all laid out in Section 9 and Section 10 of the Strata Regulations and section 35 (2) of the Act.
By the way, if this turns nasty, be aware that there are other electoral potholes that strata owners frquently fall into, especially people standing for election and cross-nominating each other and two part-owners from one household both sitting on the committee.