Owner disrupts AGM

If you do a search on this website (especially in the Forum) for “code of conduct” and “standing orders”.

There is one item that’s common in a lot of standing orders (not just for strata committees) rules that an owner may not speak on an item again until everyone else who wants to speak has had their say.  That could be handy.

If you have a standing order that an owner can be “named” as disruptive in the minutes, subject to a vote of the committee in situ, that might curb some excesses – but I doubt it.

It may be that you need to establish your standing orders which includes expected standards of behaviour at your meetings – including the Chair’s right to rule someone out of order for not speaking to the motion – then pass a by-law to establish the legality of the standing orders.

Once that’s done, issue a Notice To Comply when the disruptive neighbour misbehaves.  You could even have a standing item on your meetings’ agendas to issue Notices to Comply for breaches of by-laws.

Issue the NTC and when they do it again you can seek fines and orders at NCAT.

However, the Act allows people to attend meetings and you interfere with that right at your legal peril.

By the way, when you are passing your “standing orders” by-law, be sure to include a clause that allows the committee to agree to record the proceedings.

Your noisy neighbour doesn’t have to give their permission to be recorded, they only have to be informed that a recording is underway.  I believe that if they continue speaking when they have been clearly informed that they are being recorded, they have effectively given permission.

A motion to allow audio recording of the meeting would be effective notice that the meeting was being recorded.

The recording of their disruptive behaviour can then be used as evidence at NCAT when you are seeking orders to get the miscreant to observe the by-law that enshrines the standing orders.

Cam wrote:

I am really interested in whether, having passed all the required by-laws, one of them could be right of the Chair to declare a person “not to be heard” for continual breaches of standing orders, so that the person could be muted for the rest of the meeting.

If you are talking about strata committee meetings, then the committee has the power to agree not hear comments from non-committee members. Or to put that another way, you put forward a motion to hear owners A B and C and agree to hear only A and C.

As far as the AGM is concerned, the chair has no right to exclude owners from participating in the meeting but can control discussion, especially in a Zoom meeting.  Your standing orders could include an instruction to the chair  to moderate discussion that is not directly relevant to the topic on the agenda.  The chair should then feel very comfortable about muting the disruptive owner when they start on one of their rants.

Let the disruptor then pursue the complaint through Fair Trading and NCAT and be sure to let them know that the committee will ask for costs to be awarded against them when you defend it, on the grounds that the complaints were vexatious and of no merit.

You might even ask that the owner undertakes in writing to behave during meetings and not embark on anti-committee rants on unrelated subjects so that their valid opinions on specific subjects can be heard.  This will stand you in good stead if the owner does go to a tribunal.

Finally, we are all guilty of second-guessing the actions of owners and responses from tribunals.  Sometimes it’s easier to do what needs to be done and deal with the consequences if and when they arise. No tribunal is going to impose a statutory strata manager – the ultimate sanction – on a well-run building because they silenced one extremely disruptive voice.