@kiwipaul said:
You are in an impossible situation with an unreasonable chairperson. I agree with everything Whales says and if your chairperson was reasonable that is the way to go.Doing it legally you could end up paying for an EC meeting, EGM, cost of a SBL only to have the SBL rejected at the EGM, all of which could take 12 months. You would then be faced with going to conciliation and adjudication with a 50-50 chance of winning.
My solution would be to get the job done and keep quite about it (you say it’s not visible from outside the unit) and nobody is any the wiser. If they found out about it they would have to take you to conciliation and adjudication.
You could then advise that others have been allowed to do alterations without approval and the chairperson is acting without the approval of the EC or OC for some of his decisions.
Ask to be shown the motion (with votes) for some of the chairperson decisions by the EC or OC. These are required to be held by the SM for 5 years.
I disagree with one point here, doing the work without the permission of the OC is not the answer, and is still illegal regardless of whether other owners have carried out similar works in the past without permission. So in my view, if you did go ahead with the work quietly without approval, the OC could still claim that you have breached s65A of the SSMA 1996.