Chairman applied to NCAT for administration

Here’s an interesting one for you guys

Our chairman told us at our last EGM that he’d applied to NCAT to have an administrator appointed to run our building because of our schemes failure to maintain the common property and the correct level of insurance for the building.

My question is, how does that even work? Normally, it’s a disgruntled owner who applies to NCAT seeking to overturn an EC who has refused to act. The EC would then hire lawyers to defend the OC at the NCAT hearing.

But in this case, it is the chairman himself (with the backing of the EC) who has applied to NCAT. If the EC agrees with the chairman, then who exactly defends the OC against the charges at NCAT or does the application succeed automatically since no one from our EC would defend the charges?

By way of background to the situation, last November at the last AGM, a significant special levy for $12 million dollars was passed for urgent structural repairs to our large (over 100 lot) scheme.

Since that time, owners unhappy with the special levy and plans to repair the building have built enough support to call an EGM last week with motions to defer the repair works and a special resolution to overthrow the current EC.

At the EGM, the chairman ruled all the motions out of order under Part 2.14 of Schedule 2 of the SSMA 1996 as the passing of any motion to defer the repair works would breach special clauses in our buildings insurance cover which states that we must continue toward rectification of the structural problems or our cover will be withdrawn for the parts of the building that are unsafe.

So I believe the chairmain was correct to rule the defer motion out of order as if we lost insurance, we would be in breach of the SSMA which states we must insure against all foreseeable risks and thus we would be in breach of the law.