Strata-master Victor Dominello with departing Premier Mike Baird. Picture SMH.
I was chatting the other day with the strata Minister Victor Dominello (his proper title is Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation). I realised afterwards that, now that he has shepherded the new strata laws over the line, if there was a cabinet reshuffle, as there often is at this time of year, he could be moved on to something else.
He would have earned any promotion, for sure, but it would be a tragedy for us strata dwellers. Dominello seems to actually understand strata and is genuinely interested, unlike all but one of the other Fair Trading minister I have known since I started writing about this stuff 13 years ago.
Anyway, three days later came the first move in the mother of all reshuffles when the Premier resigned. Who will be in which chair when the music stops is anybody’s guess?
It’s been a feature of Fair Trading ministers for years that the good ones get promoted and the bad ones are allowed to hang in there until someone who hasn’t screwed up yet gets a shot.
We’ve been lucky with two of our four last incumbents. Anthony Roberts got the ball rolling on strata law reform and Victor Dominello finished the job off. There were another two in between who didn’t stick around long enough to make much of an impression either way.
Personally, I would like Dominello to stay, if only to help steer both the defects bonds and short-stay letting legislation off the rocks. With any luck, my endorsement will be enough to kill any promotion hopes he may have had.
But seriously, isn’t it time strata was taken out of Fair Trading and given its own ministry anyway? Or, at the very least, could it be attached to Planning and taken away from the Ministry of Broken Toys, Dodgy Mechanics and Bitumen Bandits?
Half the people in Sydney are going to be living in strata before you know it. Promote Dominello, by all means, but promote strata too so that if he goes, he can take us with him.
Meanwhile, down at the strata living coalface, the problems keep rolling in and the forum answers are still rolling out.
- Why do we have to apply to have pets in a strata building asks one owner. We answer them HERE.
- Upstairs bathroom flooded, damaging ceiling below – strata managers say they need an EGM to get approval to fix it. Are they right? That’s HERE.
- We all get it why a timber floor that’s basically someone else’s ceiling can be a noise problem. But what if they are side by side in adjoining townhouses? That’s HERE.
- Would you own up if you discovered you should have got permission before you installed air conditioning – eight years ago? That’s HERE.
