Alleged conflict of interest of a Committee member

I am a committee member in a really large strata plan. At the end of the last EC meeting the chairman asked all owners present at the meeting to leave to allow the EC to make decisions on the last 3 items on the agenda. These
items are contentious, involve litigation against the Owners Corporation and applications to NCAT against the OC. (This should probably tell you that we are having a lot of fun in our strata).

After owners left, the Chairman insisted that I leave also (remember I am EC member). Chairman claimed that I have a conflict of interest in the remaining 3 matters and as such Committee will not discuss the matters in my presence. I disagreed, saying that if I have a conflict of interest, than it is only on the one of 3 issues and I am happy not to be present at the discussion of this one, but not the other two. The Chairman said that if I don’t leave, he will terminate the meeting and then he will call everyone except me in another place at another time and the rest of the Committee will make their decision without me anyway. Having sympathy to the Strata Manager who
would have to return to complete the meeting, I left.

The issues are as follows:

The 1st issue: there is a litigation against either strata and/or the members of the EC (except me) from a contractor who was unfairly in my opinion sacked earlier on at the same meeting. I am the only Committee member who stood for this contractor at the meetings, but was outvoted. I am no friend of this contractor, and I am not very fond of his performance but I thought that the way he was treated was unfair. I did not meet or speak with this contractor
personally for the last 6 months, just said hello once, and I did not have a chance to talk to him before, other than casually. I am not involved in his litigation at all.

The 2nd issue: there is an application to the NCAT against some aspect of the parking. The applicant is my personal friend. The application is in the mediation stage, and the mediation took place several days before the meeting. I turned up to this mediation physically walking to the Mediation Unit with the applicant, but as a committee member I sat on the opposite side with the strata manager who represented the Owners Corporation. The mediation was successful, an agreement was reached, all present were civil and amicable and the applicant withdrew the application as the result. I hope that my presence at the mediation helped to resolve the issue.

The 3rd issue: is my own application against the Owners Corporation. I said earlier that I will not vote or participate in discussion on this issue, unless asked.

As I say, I was expelled from the discussion of all 3 issues on the basis of conflict of interest.

The questions:

1. Were the actions of the Chairman with respect to me and my presence fair and lawful?

2. Does the Act allow the Chairman to expel a committee member based on alleged conflict of interest?

3. If yes, what section of the Act allows that?

4. If yes, is it sufficient for the Chairman to just pronounce someone to have a conflict of interest and then expel a member or does such conflict need to be established independently? say by the Court or a NCAT?

5. Can I, as a member of the committee, pronounce that Chairman has a conflict of interest on certain matter and then require him to leave so that the rest of the committee can make decision in his absence? If not, who gave the
Chairman such right with respect to the members?

6. Can Chairman call a meeting of part of the committee preventing one member to participate in this meeting and without proper announcement of the meeting to all owners?

7. Will such a meeting, if called, be counted as a legitimate meeting of the Owner’s Corporation, and will Minutes of such meeting be considered the valid Minutes according to the Act? If yes, what section of the Act?

8. Will the decisions made on such meeting be considered valid decisions of the owners Corporation according to the Act? If yes, according to what section of the Act?

Thanks in advance, your responses will be greatly appreciated

kolobok