Dazed and confused by law and regs changes

Am I missing something here … apart from any ability to shrug off NSW Fair Trading’s dubious communications skills, that is?

Take the announcement last week of updates to both the laws that govern strata managers and strata law.

The first one is fairly straightforward although some of the changes expose the truth behind a stack of complaints that have been made about strata managing agents for years now.

Key among them is that strata managers must, by law, hand over all documents and records to a new strata manager, or to the strata committee, at the end of their contracts.

Why do they need to be told to do that? Isn’t that just a basic part of being professional, competent and decent human beings?

Well, yes, but there’s a long history of incompetent strata managers – or even operatives who have simply fallen out of favour – sitting on their departing schemes’ records to punish their erstwhile clients for having the temerity to either go elsewhere or decide to self-manage.

This is not the majority of strata managers, by any means, and I believe that their industry umbrella group, Strata Community Australia (NSW), fully endorses the  changes. 

And why wouldn’t they? The actions of a few intransigent strata managers reflects badly on the whole industry.

But reading the new regulations you realise what an anachronism it is having strata managers lumped in with livestock agents, travel agents, real estate and rental agents.  I’m surprised they didn’t put rules for secret agents in there too.

One section they’re talking about rules for property auctions, the next they’re listing the penalties cattle rustling. It’s beyond a joke.

Now, let’s look at the strata law changes. These were announced in the same emailed newsletter this week.

On the strata stuff, the newsletter says this:

Changes to strata and community scheme laws will start on 30 September 2022. The updated laws relate to electronic voting for meetings and using an electronic form of the seal when executing documents.

These changes will take over from the temporary COVID-19 measures for strata and community schemes. 

Key changes starting on 30 September 2022:

• Strata and community land schemes can meet and vote in person, or by using electronic means specified in the meeting notice without the need for a prior resolution. The exception is for pre-meeting electronic voting, which still needs a prior resolution.
• If using electronic voting at a meeting, reasonable steps must be taken to ensure eligible voters can participate in and vote at the time of the meeting.
• Updated procedures for nominating and electing strata and association committee members and office holders.
• Schemes can keep and use an electronic form of their seal for the execution of documents.

Most of the detail is about who can use Zoom or its equivalents for meetings and how the committee has to ensure there are alternative arrangements for people who can’t. 

In effect, it’s overtaking the Covid measures that allowed strata schemes to keep functioning at a time when we weren’t supposed to spend too much time in the same space, and has recognised that allowing people to participate remotely is a good thing anyway.

But there is oner item that caught my eye: “Updated procedures for nominating and electing strata and association committee members and office holders.”

I clicked on the “Read More” button and found this web page that said pretty much what I’ve posted above, with nothing more about nominating and electing committee members.

That’s OK, because there’s another link to this section: Strata Schemes – meeting and voting.

From that I glean that one thing that hasn’t changed is that pre-meeting electronic votes can’t be used to vote for members in an election for the committee. You can only vote for candidates either in person, by proxy or electronically during the actual meeting. 

Nomination of candidates for election isn’t even mentioned, except in regard to election of office-bearers. For more I had to dig up this document which sets out all the changes to the Strata Management Regulations that came into effect today.

In clause 11, covering nominations for officers of strata committee, the existing subclause (2) says: “Any person who is a member of the strata committee may nominate another member for election as any or all of chairperson, secretary or treasurer of the committee.”

The new regs now add subclause (2A) which says: “A nomination must be made by written notice or orally at the meeting in accordance with this clause, or the nomination is ineffective.”

Also the existing clause 5 says: “A nomination may be made at any time before the election is held and may be made at the meeting.”

And a new clause 5A says: “For an oral nomination—

(a) the nomination must be made at the meeting, and
(b) the person nominated must—

(i) be present at the meeting, and
(ii) consent to the nomination.

The other changes are fairly pedantic re-phrasings of clauses that end up meaning the same. The significant issues are those about nominating office-bearers.

It seems that, until today, any member could turn up at the first meeting of a newly elected or re-elected strata committee and just say “by the way, Geoff wants to be treasurer”.

Now, that nomination would have to be in writing, with proof that Geoff actually wants the role, or orally while Geoff is at the meeting and able to confirm his willingness to serve.

It’s all small stuff in the greater scheme of things, but it does happen that people are nominated in their absence for roles they have no desire to fulfill but then feel obliged to go along with it.

This might well occur when there is another member of the committee who does want the role but is out of favour with the chair (although the absence of the nominee doesn’t bode well).

Look, it’s all small fry, but that’s another hour of my life I won’t get back, trying to decipher what a Fair Trading announcement actually means. 

Would it have been so hard for them to have spelled out what the changes were and why they made them? One column of how things used to be, an adjacent one of how they are now.

There’s a huge difference between properly informing the public and merely pointing strata owners and residents in the direction of two pieces of legislation and leaving them to work it out for themselves.