Jef, Boronia et al – in defence of the Sydney Water Corporation and other Water Utilities, they’re both infrastructure operators / maintainers and water product retailers, and the Act that governs their operation doesn’t permit them to invoice ‘users’ of their water product because there are still operations and maintenance (service availability) based components of their charging regime that remain the responsibility of the property owner.
In this circumstance, Water Utilities could read the individual meters fitted to lots in new strata developments, but unlike Gas and Electricity Retailers, they have no way of knowing which lots are from time-to-time owner-occupied and which are tenanted, and therefore have no ability to apportion their invoices so that owners receive only the service availability charges (for water, sewerage, and stormwater) and tenants receive only their water consumption charge.
In circumstances where water meters are installed to lots retrospectively, an additional complication arises as those are recording water usage that’s already been recorded on the main meter to the property, and that has the propensity for the duplication of invoices between the owners/occupants of those lots and the owners corporstion for the common property.
Anything’s possible though including the remote recording mentioned by CBF in the case of gas usage, and even having combined meter reading contracts based upon the numbers of meters accurately read, so that one person visits the sites to read ALL meters installed there irrespective of what perochial retailers own them.