Proxy farmers fire up in face of vote drought

The backlash has started against curbs on proxy farming – the highly dubious practice of strata committee office-bearers using their privileged access to strata rolls to ‘harvest’ the votes of uninterested owners and investors.

You can understand why the proxy piggies are squealing.  Under the incoming laws, from July individuals who are used to ruling the roost with great swatches of other people’s votes will be allowed to hold no more than five percent of the ballots in a scheme of more than 20 units, and only one proxy vote in a scheme of less than 20.

However, not everyone who is unhappy with this proposal is a proxy farmer. Some people feel they should have the right to ask anyone they want to attend a meeting and vote on their behalf, regardless of how many votes they already have.

One poster on the Flat Chat Forum wrote: “If you limit the ability to appoint a proxy, e.g. by limiting how many someone can hold, it is arguable that this may result in disenfranchisement.”

Another commented: “At our last AGM an owner had more than five percent of the vote and not because the owner went and ‘farmed’ the proxies but because owners wanted that owner to have them.”

It’s true that people who want to give proxies to the people who best represent their views may miss out if too many others are of a similar mind.  However a much bigger problem is that with more than half of units in NSW owned by absent investors, the ‘blind proxy’, handed to whomever the chairman or secretary happens to be, rules.

It’s the dictatorship of the don’t knows and don’t cares. Given almost unfettered power, the more ruthless proxy farmers can stack their executive committees with cronies while critics are excluded, dissenting voices are silenced and meeting minutes are subject to a level of spin that would make the North Korean Press corp blush.

Of course there are good people who take this power and use it responsibly.  But there are way too many tinpot tyrants strutting around strata, waving great wedges of proxy votes in people’s faces, daring them to challenge their authority.

Can it work?  Well, it already does in Queensland.  And here, with proposed electronic and postal voting, along with loosening of quorum restrictions, democracy at this level has a fighting chance.

We could also adopt the Victorian system of ‘interim” decisions at general meetings.  There, any ruling made at a non-quorate meeting becomes permanent after 28 days provided no more than 25 percent of owners get together to object.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Seasoned proxy farmers are probably already planning proxy parties where panels of supporters can mop up their overflow votes and blank (but signed) voting forms will be passed around like strange cigarettes at a Nimbin wedding.

Seriously, that’s a loophole the government needs to close before the laws take effect in July next year. Blank proxies should be banned and soliciting them should be a punishable offence.

Meanwhile, the chair of one large city building has apparently written to Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts telling him that the legislation is unnecessary as proxy harvesting is an urban myth.

He’s entitled to his opinion, of course, but residents in his block tell me his argument would carry considerably more weight if he hadn’t held 50 percent of the votes at his last AGM following a bogus proxy harvesting scare campaign.

Proxy farmers look out – there’s a drought on the way. There’s a lot more on this HERE  on the forum.