One EC member communicating without permission

The EC has to do its own communication. It can issue letters to all owners or a newsletter or whatever. If there is a managing agent, the EC’s communications can be sent through that official channel. The contents can contradict the unilateral communications where they were wrong, or even explicitly ‘correct an impression that an earlier letter represented the views of the EC as a whole’. The EC needs to agree on the text of each communication and have a quiet word to the managing agent about what it going on. The rest of the EC can just persistently outvote the one member of the EC. It is annoying when this happens but the majority have the power. Owners will quickly work out that the unilateral communications were not the endorsed position of the EC.

kaindub wrote:

You could threaten them with reporting them to the privacy commissioner as they are using private information (addresses and emails) for spamming owners.

I’m pretty sure the Privacy Act doesn’t cover this kind of communication, for a variety of reasons, not least the provisions that we cite when demanding that strata managers turn over owners’ email addresses when they clearly have them in their possession.  This document is quite enlightening in this regard.

Your last point is probably the best tactic.  Respond to every unofficial email with a standard email that says something like:

“The email sent out on [insert date] entitled [insert subject line] was not an official communication from your committee.  This was from one isolated member of the committee and does not necessarily reflect the views of your elected committee.  Please feel free to disregard this message and any others that don’t come from the committee’s secretary, even though they purport to come from the committee.”

If the miscreant continues, threaten to have them removed from the committee either via a special resolution at a General Meeting or through action at NCAT.  Often the prospect of the public humiliation of even initiating such a move would make them pull their head in

Of course, this kind of bullying may make it hard for the committee to each agreement on this, at least in open session.

Perhaps you might point out to other members, initially individually and in private, that anything they walk past is something they endorse and they could be held liable for negative consequences if they don’t assert some control over communications coming out of the committee.

Then present the response emails option at your next committee meeting and get the votes you need.

If the person concerned IS the secretary, they can be removed from that role (but not the committee) by a simple committee vote.  Again the prospect of that humiliation may be enough to get them to behave.

Court wrote:

The Strata Manager will not provide a list of contact addresses for owners citing privacy issues but then won’t pass anything on.

The Privacy Act doesn’t cover the vast majority of strata schemes so any claims of privacy are BS.  Strata law says owners are entitled to see any records held on behalf of the owners corporation, regardless of whether the committee, the strata manager or the owners want them to.

This includes the strata roll which should include the addresses of owners and residents (who are breaching strata law if they don’t register them).

If the strata manager uses email to communicate with strata owners you are entitled to see their email list. If they say the email list belongs to them (the latest way sneaky strata managers are avoiding owners communicating with each other)  you are entitled to see all the communications they have made by email which will obviously include email addresses.

What do you do next?  Tell the strata managers that they are acting illegally in denying you access to strata information and if they don’t stop it, you will be reporting them to Fair Trading and the SCA.

And do a search on this website for any other posts and articles on email addresses.