#25614
Jimmy-T
Keymaster

    The thinking in NSW seems to be that by law the owners have to provide a contact address on the strata roll and the strata roll has to be available for inspection to all owners.  However the law doesn’t require owners to provide an email address so that is not part of the strata roll and, for privacy reasons, is withheld from the official records of the strata scheme.

    But just to give you an idea of how twisted this is, our EC – normally dominated by a person who proxy farms on an agri-business scale – has emailed out a newsletter asking owners to give their proxies to EC members, due to the change in the law.

    When I said they should also allow other owners to put their names forward, just in case there are owners who don’t want the same bunch of people making all the decisions about the building, the snotty response I got was that the email distribution service was not to be used by ordinary owners “due to reasons of privacy”.

    What’s that saying about “absolute power”?

    There is a fairly easy and inexpensive way to get around this. Get some postcards printed up telling people that they are not getting all the information they need about the running of their strata scheme and if they want to know more, here is your email address.  Most people will ignore it but some will be intrigued.

    Arguments about privacy are pretty spurious, anyway, when you see what people put on Facebook and Twitter.

    The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.