Non-member wishes to address an Executive Committee meeting.

Gees Costa; it’s only been 72 hours since your first post on this topic, and speaking for myself, unless a query is atypical or particularly detailed I usually wait for as few days so as to give others a chance to respond!

Anyway as you’re obviously anxious, my interpretation of Sch.3, Cl.14 and common courtesy is that you should formally advise the Secretary of your intention to attend and of the Motions you wish to speak to, and as soon as the Meeting is convened ask for a vote by the Members to authorise your desire to address it; that is for a “blanket” authorisation to address the Meeting with regard to the Motions previously advised. 

@Costa said:
I plan to attend an Executive Committee meeting of our building … I know I am entitled to go; I know I need permission to speak. But … do I need to tell the EC I plan to attend ahead of the meeting or can I just turn up?

It would be a matter of courtesy to tell the committee chair that you plan to attend and that you will be hoping to speak to the committee – but there’s no hard and fast rule.

Is permission to speak granted on an ‘agenda item-by-item’ basis? Or is a ‘blanket permission’ granted to speak on any item?

This depends on how the Chair handles the request.  If he or she takes a vote on your request to speak at the meeting at the beginning, without specifying the topic, then you can pretty much speak on anything.  If they make it specific to the issue you are interested in, then you should restrict your comments to that issue.  Again, there are no hard and fast rules.

There are 10 agenda items, none written as proper motions where a yea or nay is required, but some important issues are going to be decided on.

There needs to be an agenda, as only items on the agenda can be discussed and voted on.  There is no allowance of “any other business” in NSW strata law.

The only way to ensure that you get your point of view “on the record” is to submit a motion for the meeting with an attachment that you clearly state you want to have adopted into the minutes.  Otherwise you could end up with something like “Costa raised some objections which were considered but were dismissed by a majority of the committee” in the minutes.

This would be perfectly legal, so if you want to get your message out to other owners, put it in writing.  And, while you are at it, try to stick to hard facts and dial down the sarcasm – it might not make any difference to your committee members but it will make you look more reasonable to other owners.