This has been a glaring hole in strata management contracts for decades and the strata managers’ professional body in its various iterations, previously fought tooth and nail to protect its members immunity from liability.
This included threatening to sue owners corps for copyright infringement if they tried to use the rest of their standard contracts with perfectly reasonable amendments.
However, the NSW SCA (the strata managers professional body) last year was accepted into the Professional Standards Scheme. This comes with certain self-regulatory commitments, including a review of their standard contract.
And we hear that Fair Trading is also looking at fixing that at the next strata law changes.
So the answer is, if your strata manager refuses to change the liability clauses in their contract, find one who will. They’re out there – just keep looking.