How can we get a Royal Commission into strata managers?

To, in particular Bennifer and Attila the Strata Manager. I once spent a couple of days looking into all this. The one huge strata company with an even bigger parent company. Their arrangements with merchant banks, automatic payment systems, insurance companies  and such…

Now our problem is a little company set up by people who worked there who know what they can get away with and are twice as bad. Particularly when they have orchestrated a Strata Committee cabal takeover.

It’s all very immoral and even corrupt.I feel I should write it all down and give it to someone… but who?

Could not agree more with Jimmy T, unsubstantiated sweeping statements only serve to reduce the credibility of those making the assertion. The good strata managers would also have an interest in weeding out the poorer operators.

Strata law is not easy or straightforward. It takes years to become a lawyer, and more years to become expert in strata law. It does not seem unreasonable to me that the educational qualification to be a strata manager should be higher. Strata managers in many circumstances strongly influence and even control major decisions, and relatively junior staff are able to deduct money from trust accounts without oversight (at least in the case of the strata management company with which I am currently familiar).

In addition to considering the educational qualifications of strata managers, perhaps a duty of care to strata owners could be enshrined in legislation as has been done for builder’s, engineers etc through the new Building and Design Professionals Act.

You could always launch a petition – like this one about pets –  at the NSW parliament (all you need is 20,000 signatures and the agreement of a member of parliament to present a motion to parliament once the numbers have been reached.

This is what it says on the Petition web page:

• To submit a petition you will need to provide your name, email address, physical address and a contact phone number. We need this information so we can contact you if there are any problems with your petition. Only your name will be listed publicly, once your petition has been made public.

• You will need to provide at least five names and email addresses of people who will support your petition. We recommend you provide details for more than five supporters in case some don’t respond.

• You will need to identify a Member of the Legislative Assembly who will present the petition for you. We recommend you contact the Member to let them know you are asking them to agree to present your petition.

As far as finding someone to support the petition, it’s going to carry more weight if they are on the government side (and I know at least one minister who is less than happy with the way some strata managers do business).

However, rather than calling for a Royal Commission, they are more likely to support a shakeup of the strata management system, preferably one that supports the good operators and gets rid of the shonks (something like what David Chandler is trying to do with the building industry).

The motion could be something like: “That the government investigates the strata management and strata facilities management industries with a view to making operators more accountable,  contracts consistent across the sector for both strata managing agents and strata facilities managers,  and the holding of licenses contingent on meeting basic perfomance indicators.”

Here at Flat Chat we shouldn’t really get directly involved but we would certainly publicise the petition if someone else started it.