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I am a long-term Owner in a NSW located Sydney suburban Strata Plan building.
A recent years’ new Owner got herself elected Secretary of our Strata Committee by presenting herself as Proactive, and soon proceeded to misuse or abuse the Secretary-only access to the Strata Roll, and then wrote to seemingly all the Owners who do not attend AGMs, as can be easily found by reading the attendance Minutes of past Years’ AGMs, and requested they grant their Proxy to her, or to one of her Named accomplices for when she held her full quota of Proxies for AGMs.
To-date after two Years she has now got her full quota of Proxies, and the full Quota of Proxies for two other members of our Strata Committee who are her accomplices { by whatever common agreement } and the full Quota of Proxies given to the both the Father and the Boyfriend of one accomplice, that is: at the last AGM the three agreed-interest Committee members and their two accomplice non-Owners had their overwhelming Majority of Votes to Pass or Fail all Motions regardless of other Owners’ discussion points, and they also Passed limiting the Number of Members of the Strata Committee to five members so that the three common-interest Members now can decide every Motion of the Strata Committee._
The effective result is that 3 Strata Committee members now decide and control all Policies, etc … for our Strata Plan.
The fore-going should be made Illegal, for example by not permitting the only Owner who has access to the Strata Roll to write to non-resident Owners whom the writer has never met and does not personally know and telling those Owners only the parts of upcoming matters which the writer wants revealed, and stating accomplice-persons’ Names to give Proxies to for when the writer’s quota is filled
It can be argued that a wary Owner would not give their Proxy to an unknown person, not even to a recently elected committee Secretary, but I have now been given one of the fishing Letters by a wary Owner and I understand the cunning misleading way it was phrased and which was sufficient for enough Owners to give Proxies to unknown-to-them people.
Still, as seems common in multi-Owners Strata buildings in Sydney, many Owners did not participate in AGM voting, and slightly less than 25% attended the AGM in-person, but significantly more than another 25% gave their Proxies to the accomplices-group.
A NSW Fair Trading officer told me that NSW Fair Trading do not have any power to stop that abuse, thus I ask here, is there any way for enough of us to convince the NSW Government to legislate against misuse/abuse but without limiting Owners’ rights to appoint Proxies ?
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This is what the law says:
26 Appointment of proxies(1) Duly appointed proxy A person is a duly appointed proxy for the purposes of this Part if the person is appointed as a proxy by an instrument in the form approved by the Secretary and the form is signed by the person appointing the proxy or executed in any other manner permitted by the regulations.
Now the offical form – which is the only one legally acceptable – has a second space in which the lot owner can name a back-up proxy if the initial nominee has exceeded their quota. I’m not a lawyer but if that space is left blank, I would argue that the lot owner hasn’t nominated the person who is later named in the form. They left the space blank and someone else wrote the name in.
I would seek mediation at Fair Trading with a view to a Section 232 ruling at NCAT to order the secretary to stop canvassing for votes with blank spaces for overspill nominees.
And I’d ask to be able to see and copy the strata roll – which you are legally entitled to do – so that you can alert all the other owners to the fact that a cabal is gaming the system to give themselves absolute power in the scheme.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
Jimmy-T may be right, that you could challenge the validity of the proxy forms, if you can show they were signed and dated with a blank name of the recipient of the proxy, which was later filled in. I suspect this is a common practice, and the Tribunal may or may not find in your favour if you ran that case. Also, the purpose of a proxy is to permit anyone to act on behalf of an owner, and it would not be too difficult to arrange for valid proxies to be made out to the current management team, with a little more effort involved.
Nevertheless, that would still leave you with some valid proxies, and some owners voting for the current management team. Have you got the numbers to out-vote them? I would suggest you do what your opponent have done – contact all the other owners, put a valid case to them to elect a different management team, and rally the majority of owners in your building to elect you and your team of owners.
Your assumption that only the secretary of the strata committee has access to all the owner’s contact details is not correct. Any owner can get access to that information, although you may need to pay a small fee to do so.
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