Are there by-laws for transparency, probity and governance?

When you read the Strata Schemes Mgt Act, there are various provisions for proper governance such as acting fairly for all owners. You can also inspect the books under ss 182 and 183.  The other thing is to ring up the OFT who can give you advice.

Agree with you Jimmy, enforcement is always difficult. I am going through this right now with respect to how I can bring proper governance in my own strata plan. Compulsory strata mgt is fraught. Another possible way is to remove SC members – hence my query in another post as to how successful that has been for others.

Owsley wrote:

I’ve been searching for a way to hold them accountable. I can get an EGM organised to reverse the resolution for the Special Levy or take them to the OFT and CTTT. But to me there are important issues of probity, transparency, governance and fairness, not just in this matter but in others as well.

OK, here’s your first issue.  Do you want to reverse the decision or hold them accountable – these are different but related issues?  Your fellow owners may well support you in the former but be reluctant to to get involved in the personal politics of the latter.

My advice would be to get the 25 percent of owners’ signatures to call the EGM, have an agenda that has two items: 1. get more quotes, 2. Decide on a special levy or a strata loan to pay for the winning quote.

Sort all that out and you will have a platform for fixing the problems with the committee, probably at your next AGM.  Try to do it all at once and the very real financial issues get lost in the fog of strata war and you will probably lose.

If you think there is a chance they will push ahead with contracts, initiate action at Fair Trading and NCAT to reverse the decision and apply for an interim order to halt any further work until another meeting has been held.

But once again, making this too contingent on personal attacks will probably blow up in your face.

EnterSandman wrote:

Maybe it isn’t deja vu! Knew I’d seen this problem elsewhere.

I take your point, only too well. We have been plagued by one or two obsessive users posting variations of the same complaints under a variety of names (which is a strict violation of our policy and can result in that user being banned from the website).

In the past, we could detect this by tracking their IP addresses, but, as I said, these people are obsessed and they find a variety of ways of using this website to harass and defame their neighbours, usually because they are too gutless to stand up at a public meeting and air their issues through the normal channels.

Or they know the other neighbours are sick of hearing it all.  Or they are just plainly in the wrong, and they know it, but can’t let go of their sense of  injustice.

Our problem is that we are here to give a voice to the voiceless members of strata communities, and we are reluctant to shut people down unless we have clear evidence that they have breached our rules, and even then they will get a warning first, just in case they weren’t aware.

Trust me, even fewer people read the rules of a web forum than read the by-laws of their building.

For the record, multi-posts under different names, or even the same post under the same name in different sub-forums, are clear breaches of our policies.

But then you get the nutters (sensitive Flatchatters, please send any objections to that term, in writing, in a self-addressed envelope). I reckon the classic profile is a retired male who may have been in a clerical job or management or sales, who thinks he is a bit smarter than the rest of us (in my case, this may well be true).

In their case, the smoking gun will be a wallet with  a gold Opal card and multiple library cards. Thus they can scoot around the city – $2.80 for all-day travel on public transport – using different Forum user names on different libraries’ computers, plus maybe a smartphone or tablet, just to annoy their neighbours (and me).

Then there are VPNs, privacy protections which are intended to prevent our bank details from being hacked when we use our laptops in cafes, but also let my computer think your computer is based somewhere else entirely, other than your back bedroom.

Just this morning I switched off the VPN blocker – introduced to stymie the sneaks – because it was keeping out bona fide users who are heeding increasing and valid warnings about protecting their online identites.

So thanks, EnterSandman, for highlighting this issue.

These obsessives are undermining everything we try to do here, taking advantage of our policy of anonymity for their own pathetic ends and making life just a little bit less pleasant for all of us.

“I reckon the classic profile is a retired male who may have been in a clerical job or management or sales, who thinks he is a bit smarter than the rest of us (in my case, this may well be true). In their case, the smoking gun will be a wallet with  a gold Opal card and multiple library cards. Thus they can scoot around the city – $2.80 for all-day travel on public transport – using different Forum user names on different libraries’ computers, plus maybe a smartphone or tablet, just to annoy their neighbours (and me).”

Nice, JimmyT, Keymaster. Very constructive. There’s always the chance they’re in the right and the possibility you’re being hoodwinked by the likes of EnterSandman and smooth operator, ya know.