I suggested another meeting to ratify the previous decisions purely as a way of getting the message out that asking for everything to be strictly legal comes with consequences, preferably financial.
Following on from your other posts, I has taken me 20 years to realise that strata law isn’t law at all; it’s a set of guidelines based on the participants “best endeavours”.
Just look at the regs on who can and can’t vote at committee meetings. In fact, most procedural rules for strata meetings don’t bear close scrutiny.
What happens if someone doesn’t declare a conflict of interest and votes in favour of something that’s to their advantage? Nothing? Is the decision automatically invalid? Nope. Is the conflicted member penalised in any way? Nuh! Is the whole meeting declared a wash because it was conducted under false premises? Are you crazy?
I can’t help thinking of the tenants who were cleared by the Tribunal of breaching a Notice to Comply with a by-law because they said they were unaware of it, despite the fact that they had signed their lease saying they had read the by-laws and the Notice To Comply had the by-law reproduced on it, as the law demands.
The real problem is that the Tribunal is run by the Attorney-General’s Department and the laws are set by Fair Trading, and never the twain shall meet. Even today, if you ask the A-G’s department about a strata issue in relation to the Tribunal, they say “talk to Fair Trading”. Ask the same question of Fair Trading and they say talk to the A-G department.
The only positive thought in all this is that most strata owners and residents haven’t worked out that they can do pretty much what they want and no-one can do much about it.