Podcast: Strata lawyer answers Forum questions

In this week’s podcast we ask leading strata lawyer David Sachs to run the rule over some of the questions in our Forum.

For instance, can the owners corporation charge Airbnb hosts the difference if insurers increase premiums because there are short-term holiday lets in the block?

Is it okay to have a paper only AGM with the committee elected by pre-meeting electronic votes?

Who pays the costs when a renovator has to get a retrospective by-law for works done without permission?

Which law – anti-discrimination or building codes – takes precedence when an owner wants a chairlift installed in a common property stairwell.

Can an ordinary owner take a strata manager to the tribunal for failure to fulfill their responsibilities?

What can an owner do if their motion for the AGM is left off the agenda when it is published?

There are answers to all those questions and more in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

Transcript in full

Jimmy  00:00

Regular readers of flatchat will know that we have a very lively forum where you ask and answer questions about living in strata. Now, sometimes the answers we give are well informed and based on experience, and sometimes they are, let us say a little bit more theoretical and hypothetical. With that in mind, we have asked David Sachs, from one of our sponsors, Sachs Gerace lawyers, to look at some of those questions and give us a definitive answer from the point of view of strata law. I’m Jimmy Thomson. I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review, and this is the Flat Chat Wrap.

Jimmy  01:01

I’m joined today by David Sachs of Sachs Gerace lawyers, one of our sponsors, and I’d have to say one of the preeminent strata lawyers in Sydney, New South Wales, probably Australia. Good afternoon, David.

David  01:15

Thank you, Jimmy. Good afternoon.

Jimmy  01:17

How are you, by the way, are you well?

David  01:19

I’m very well. I’m very well. Thank you, Jimmy, yeah, everything’s going well in strataland.

Jimmy  01:24

And you with all this stuff with the strata managers? Is it changing much in your life, or has it not taken effect yet?

David  01:31

Not really. I mean, they’ve been sporadic instances where it’s come up, which is, you know, sort of a lack of trust about strata managers. I think that’s kind of a bit of a reaction to, you know, that incident that was reported. But I mean, you know, it’s not as though there’s been anything particular that’s been exposed.

Jimmy  01:53

No no indeed. So we’re going to run through some questions that have popped up in the forum recently. And since we get lots of opinions, some of them well informed, some of them less well informed, I thought we’d turn to an authoritative figure like David to get the correct answer. Okay, let’s move on to the first question. An insurance company has withdrawn their initial offer for coverage and increased the coded premiums because there are short term lets in the block. Can the owners Corporation legitimately charge the difference back to the short term holiday letting hosts, or do they just need to find another insurer?

David  02:30

There is a process in the Strata Schemes Management Act whereby a premium increase that is generated by a particular use of Lot property can be charged back to the lot owner generally. In fact, all of the cases that I’ve seen are about people using premises as tattoo parlours, or for, you know, brothels or sex related premises where they’re considered to be, you know, a particular risk that insurers have identified. But if in the provision in the strata schemes. Management Act, Section 82 is not limited to those particular uses. And it says, if the use to which a lot in a strata scheme is put causes an insurance premium for the strata scheme to be greater than it would be if it were not put to that use. So exactly your question, so much of a contribution payable by the owner of the lot, as is attributable to the insurance premium may, a nd here’s the kicker, with the consent of the owner, be increased to reflect the extra amount of the premium. So I’m imagining that would with the consent bit would come in if someone is applying to change the use and the owner’s Corporation is considering it, and they impose a condition that says, Well, if you do want to use it as a tattoo parlor, or you want to use it as I don’t know that Airbnb would operate in quite the same way that they would say as a condition, you have to pay the premium. But now, of course, if people don’t consent, we can trolley it all off to NCAT, and they can decide about doing it. So that’s sort of a cost benefit analysis about what they want to do, how much premium you’re talking about, but if it’s you know, sometimes these things can be quite stark, and if it’s worth it, then then NCAT can do it for the owner’s Corp, if the particular owner is not prepared to consent.

Jimmy  04:15

Now the thing about Airbnb historically has been that they and the authorities have said, well, it’s not a change of use, it’s still residential. Would that be an obstacle in that? Do you think?

David  04:29

Not really it, because it doesn’t talk in the section about a change of use. It only talks about the use. So if it’s you don’t have a precondition to say it was being used for residential purposes, and now it’s being used for a different type of residential purpose. You don’t need to do that. It’s just that if the underwriters at the insurance company identify the uses Airbnb as a particular risk and adjust the premium accordingly, there’s a process there that allows that increase to be a user pays thing rather than a. you know than being socialized through the owners Corporation as a whole.

Jimmy  05:05

All right, Okay, moving on, a schemes committee has sent out an agenda for a paper only AGM, and in that agenda, it only nominates the current members of the committee for re election. Is this legitimate? And what can other owners do if it isn’t?

David  05:23

There’s a few hidden issues in that question. One is it’s it’s legit in the sense that a notice of meeting can include people who are who have already nominated for positions on the strata committee. Can do that. It’s just that other bits and pieces in the Act and the regs require there also to be a notice that nominations are also called for, and so people can call for or they can call for nominations at the meeting, and people can nominate at the meeting, yeah, but that’s one thing to be said about it. So there’s nothing that’s not legit about a notice of meeting, just including the names of people. And somebody looks at it goes, oh my god, it’s already decided. You know, we’re being railroaded. No one can get on that. That’s not correct. The other thing to say is that you can’t just have a meeting that is only a paper meeting, and by paper meeting, I guess the inquirer is talking about pre meeting, electronic voting, and so you can’t do that. There’s a decision of Curry that says you can’t. You can, whilst it’s a bit more flexible around strata committee meetings, you’re required to, in fact, hold a meeting for general meetings of the OC and there is a specific provision, clause 14a of the regs that says an election of strata committee members cannot be determined by pre meeting voting. So if the undercurrent to this question is they’ve set it all up so there’s going to be a vote by pre meeting voting, and they’ve only nominated themselves, and there’s no room for other people to nominate, and there’s not going to be a vote, and it’s a fait accomplit that can’t be done because there must be a future opportunity at a meeting for other people to nominate and participate in the election process for to be on the committee.

Jimmy  05:23

So at the very least, it would have to be like a Zoom meeting or a telephone

David  06:11

Correct? Okay,

Jimmy  06:19

It can’t just say, even if they said, You can nominate, if you like, but we’re not going to have a meeting, then that wouldn’t stand, would it

David  07:10

Correct yeah, you’ve got to, in fact, have the meeting. And that meeting can also be, you know, can be a zoom, an AVL, meeting of some sort, where people are actually there, and that’s because meetings are there for people to discuss issues.

Jimmy  07:25

Okay. Now moving on to another matter. When a strata scheme insists on an owner preparing a by-law to cover renovations that have already been completed without prior permission, there are several costs, as you know, associated with preparing a by-law, including the cost of the strata manager registering the bylaw who would pay the costs in that case?

David  08:08

Most of the time, this is generated by there being a standoff, in the sense that an owners Corporation has detected or had reported to it that there’s been some unauthorized work that ought to have been approved in some way, and in this case, or to have been approved and have a by-law. So the standoff that you’ve got is an owner’s Corporation saying this is unauthorized work and it’s liable to be removed, and that having to be reinstated, the common property, they have to be reinstated. And so the the offending owner is then presented with the option of either being a defendant to that sort of an action or producing a retrospective by law satisfactory to the owners Corporation at its cost to, you know, to engage its own lawyer to prepare the bylaw to pay for the owners corporations costs of having its lawyer review and comment on the bylaw, and then to negotiate something that you know, the that it is able to be recommended to a general meeting, and then the associated costs of the strata manager to call the meeting, hold the meeting, etc, and then registration is, is is kind of it just kind of travels with that whole concept

Jimmy  09:25

And, and this would be a case where all of those costs would come back to the owner who wants you know they’re to legitimize their renovations.

David  09:34

Yeah, yeah, because the strata schemes Management Act doesn’t speak about that. It doesn’t say that that’s what has to be done. It’s so it’s really something that people will negotiate, and often that’s negotiated in, you know, a light sort of threat scenario where somebody’s done the wrong thing and they’re they’re really faced with a Hobson’s choice of, you know, paying for it to regularize it, or dealing with the consequences of it not being regularized and having things reinstated. They’re really messy. I find dealing with those things when I’m dealing with an awkward case at the moment where there’s been a lot of unauthorized work, and some parts are actually quite attractive. They’ve improved the building and whatever. But others, you can understand why other lot owners were objecting to it. And in the end, stubbornness ruled. And so the tribunal was asked, and then inevitably ordered that the all of the new works be removed and the common property be reinstated. That was essentially, you know, like including things like converting what looked like a very attractive modern garden into some rubbishy overgrown, you know, throwback to the 1980s I mean, it’s kind of, it’s kind of dumb, except they’re the orders, and then people are, you know, scrambling around after the event to try and regularize it all. But they’ve got, you know, a knife to their throat because they’ve got tribunal orders requiring them to do something that’s going to be costly. And ultimately, and ultimately, just, you know, just poor decision making in the face of, you know, having to negotiate with other people about what, say, a mutually acceptable outcome that an owner’s Corp is prepared to vote for. Yeah. And the smaller the scheme, and we know how many small schemes there are in New South Wales, the smaller the scheme, the more intense some of this acrimony can often be.

Jimmy  11:25

It’s always personal. In a small scheme, there’s no remote sense of some other people making decisions for me. Now, this sounds like a case where like a very good warning that it’s just better to get permission rather than apologize after the matter, because the Tribunal will go by strata law. I guess,

David  11:47

Indeed, it would be a tribunal that would be hard to measure and hard to respect if it just made, well, just an impressionistic decision about what it thought was the right decision. I mean, their job is to apply the Strata Schemes Management Act that can’t do anything else sometimes, that you know, or that that fulfills the overriding principle, even though, in a particular circumstance, someone might think it’s, you know, uneconomical

Jimmy  12:12

In this case, where, obviously the person who did the renovations has seriously miscalculated and has assumed that the the tribunal would come down on their side, and the tribunal hasn’t. Is there an option there for that person to come back and say, Okay, can we negotiate on what we change and what we don’t?

David  12:30

Definitely? Yeah, definitely. And some, sometimes you’ll see in tribunal orders, they’ll that they’ll do some sort of caveat to the order that they’ve made that it will, you know, that will expire if the owners Corporation subsequently approves a retrospective by-law to authorize the work to remain,

Jimmy  12:51

Right Okay,

David  12:53

It’s just a bit a big hint, basically,

Jimmy  12:57

Yeah,just sit down and sort yourselves out. Is what it’s saying. On a related issue, like, we’ve got this a different renovator, but they’ve gone ahead and done their renovations without permission, and people in the committee, obviously the other owners have kind of, they’re aware of it, they haven’t done anything about it, and suddenly the apartment is up for sale, and now they feel we’d better get something done about this. What tactically, tactically,  what can they do in that kind of circumstance?

David  13:28

Yeah, it’s a it’s a tricky one, and I’ve certainly seen situations where people are being criticized for having unauthorized work in their apartment, and yet that work was done by a previous owner, and it creates a lot of, I mean, everybody is a loser in that situation, because the, you know, the current owner has paid for it. And, yeah, sure, there was a bit of a slackness around, you know, in the conveyance and that they didn’t look at and see what, you know, was actually in the apartment, and whether there was a by-law to authorize those things. Sometimes that’s obvious, like attic extensions. Sometimes that’s less obvious, like, you know, a bathroom renovation. Who knows whether that’s been done or not? I guess you could guess, but not, not everybody can guess, when you’re faced with that, and you can see someone who’s actually carried out unauthorized work, and they’re about to, you know, write off into the sunset, potentially out of the reach of the owners Corporation. Then the owners corporation would have very little time to act on that, and that’s because it’s its options are set out if someone carries out unauthorized work under Section 132 of the act. So they can either get an order requiring the offending owner to reinstate the work. Now, if they go and sell and six weeks later, they’re not there that that can’t possibly work, because they can’t be, the Tribunal’s not going to order them to carry out work on somebody else’s property. And then the other one is, is that the owner’s corporation, carry out the work itself, and recover those costs from the owner. Now it’s so that’s something that you know may be able to be affected by an owner’s corp in the sense that they could go and get that order, and then they would get a money order against someone who used to be an owner but no longer is. I mean, that’s not excluded from from NCATs powers,

Jimmy  13:36

Right. One of the things I’ve suggested in this case is to very quickly send a letter to the person, the renovator, the vendor of the apartment, saying you’ve got unapproved renovations. And we will be pursuing this in the hope that the vendor will come to the party and say, “Well, can we quickly put together a by-law passing on response”, because it’s all about responsibility for the renovations if they go wrong. Would that be enough? Do you think initially to put it on the record that the renovations weren’t approved, and there could be some comeback in the in the future?

David  16:05

Well, sure. And then, then, then you, I guess you could stir the pot by notifying the real estate agent. And, you know, I but perhaps somehow, and I’ve seen examples of this where they’ve communicated with potential purchases that there’s unauthorized work there one of those things for someone coming in, like, if someone’s done renovation to the bathroom, an incoming purchaser would prefer that the risk of the waterproofing be borne by the owners corporation, which it will. If there’s no common property memorandum that’s been adopted and there’s no by-law that’s transferred responsibility. Then defective waterproof membrane that the new owner had nothing to do with will still remain with the owner’s corp. So they’re not going to be rushing to say that there should be a by-law urgently made that’s going to make the new owner responsible for waterproofing. But it’s just it’s so haphazard. All the things that we’re talking about I was was funny that I saw that because I read, and I don’t remember where I read it now, is that some an owners Corporation had put a caveat on a lot when it was confronted with a situation. Now I think that’s completely misconceived. So if anyone you know out there thinks that, wow, that’s a good idea. We’ll put a caveat. I don’t see that the owners Corporation is claiming to have an interest in the land, which is what a caveat is designed to protect. But it’s really that the owners corporation might have rights to require things to be rectified. But I really did. As soon as I read that, my immediate reaction was, that’s not a caveat of interest, and that sort of a caveat should not be lodged by an owner’s Corporation in a similar situation to one you raised the, I mean, yeah, yeah. It’s a tricky one. It really is a Yeah. It really is very difficult, and it requires people to play, sort of, you know, to rush around and do things that people probably don’t want to get involved in.

Jimmy  18:02

Yeah, absolutely. But the ultimate thing where you’re aiming for is to get a by-law in place to protect the owners corporation, and then exactly let the owner sell the property with everything transparent and above board.

David  18:19

That’s right, that’s what’s in the interests of the owners corporation to make sure, I guess, if we’re just talking about a bathroom renovation, that it is not responsible for the repair and maintenance of that waterproofing, should it fail at some time in the future.

Jimmy  18:39

Okay, moving on to another topic, a mobility compromised owner has demanded a stair lift be installed in a property, presumably quite a small unit block, and the installation of the stair lift would partially restrict emergency movement people trying to get out in a fire, for instance, which law takes precedence, the anti-discrimination or the building codes.

David  19:04

I know you asked me this question because you wanted to be able to for me to be able to say, I don’t know, or it depends, yes, there is a a hugely general principle that any law that is a federal law will take precedence over a mere state law or some planning regulation. But plainly, there needs to be some sort of if you are going to be interfering with fire, access, egress, you know, all of those safety mechanisms. It’s not, you know, there’s clearly competing interests that need to be dealt with. You’ve got a you’ve got an existing DA that undoubtedly will have a requirement that those access, sorry, those safety egress requirements remain and they cannot be blocked. So if someone does it, it’s actually an offense to carry out work on a property that is contrary to a planning instrument, and that would include a DA so I can’t imagine there would be a situation where you’d say, we need to commit a criminal offence in order to comply with anti-discrimination legislation to put in access for a person who requires that to get in and out of their apartment. So to say that there is a some broad principle of conflict that we want, that when one where one legal obligation takes priority over over another, I think is just overly simplistic. And I don’t know how many situations it would be where there is only that conflict is the only situation, as opposed to some other means of being able to, you know, to meet both of the requirements at the same time. But I suspect it would be a tricky design thing, and you would need, there are specialists in these areas who would have to work through these things and ultimately get planning approval from from the local council.

Jimmy  21:09

And I have to say that this is not the first time this question has come up on the flat chat forum, which is where we’re getting all our questions. And you know, various people come up with, I think, in the case in this particular one, they’ve worked out that the design of the stairlift is such that it would only intrude by a few centimeters into what is considered a safe space. And I think quite sensibly, they’ve said, “Yeah, let’s put it in. It’s better to put it in than try and fight it.” But yeah, it’s tricky, and I wasn’t setting you up to say…

David  21:42

No, no, no, sure. But, I mean, I know, even if something I don’t know what, how important two centimeters is when there’s an encroachment. I mean, these things have got measurements, and measurements are there, and a meter is a meter is a meter. It’s not 98 centimeters. So if that’s what’s required, and I’ve certainly seen defects cases where, you know there are distances to fire extinguishers and whatever it is, 15 meters. And I’ve seen people saying, well, it’s 15.2 meters, as if that means major remedial work needs to be done to bring it down. I mean, I don’t know what to say. If there’s a measurement, then that’s it,

Jimmy  22:17

Right. Here’s another one about stairs, newly carpeted, common property stairs in a block. It’s an old, an old fashioned block timber stairs, they put carpet on, or they’ve renewed the carpet, and somebody said that they need to put safety tapes or safety noses on each of the risers, because somebody could trip and fall. No, it’s It’s within the building. It’s common property. It’s not a public area. But do they still have to put in the safety measures?

David  22:49

Well, one of the things when the famous section 106 which is the one that sets out an an owner’s corporation’s duty to maintain the common property. A lot of people focus on that. They call it the repair and maintenance that we’ve got to repair and we’ve got to maintain the common property. Well, I think the missing part of it that people often ignore is that they’ve got to keep the common property in good and serviceable repair. So the repair and maintain is the action. The good and serviceable repair is the object of it. And so if they’re putting in new carpet, and in order for that to be good and serviceable, ie, you know, it’s safe, that’s able, proper, able to be used, you know, whatever or whatever criteria might apply to a particular activity. If that’s actually necessary for it to be good and serviceable, then that’s part of the owner’s corporation’s duty to do it.

Jimmy  23:47

So they have to put the safety tape in short well,

David  23:51

Except if the I’ve never heard of safety tape until you just mentioned it. Now I’ve certainly seen those noses or, you know, those treads that are on stairs. Yeah, they’re great. I’ve seen them on, you know, concrete stairs. I’ve seen them on wooden stairs. I’ve seen them on carpeted stairs. I can well imagine, I’ve lived in a house that’s had carpeted stairs. I can well imagine how useful those treads would be. Whether somebody says that they’re required or not really. You know, depends on people who are safety experts. All I would say is that this is probably a good example of a thing that needs to be accounted for by an owner’s Corporation when it’s considering how it deals with the common property and what it does for its repair and maintenance in that if there is a safety issue that arises on the common property, then that’s something that it needs to install. There used to be, there was, there were all these cases. I always thought they were just right. They gave me a bad feeling. I thought they were wrong when people would say, we had a building built in the 70s, all we’ve got to do is repair and maintain it, which means keep it in the condition that it was before, the fact that it’s non-compliant with current standards, and it’s been non-compliant for the last, you know, 30 years, balustrades as the obvious example. But that means we don’t have to upgrade them, but except that in that Doherty case that the appeal panel decided a couple of years ago and seems to have been picked up, that the Tribunal is getting much more practical about it, saying, “Well, if it raises a safety issue, then an IE, if we don’t upgrade it, then it’s going to be, it’ll it’ll create a risk, and unreasonable risk for people. Then that’s the owner’s Corporation’s responsibility”. Doesn’t mean, say you’ve got the Glenquarry case, which was, you know, a good one where they said, where we had the lift, you know, that was the famous lift case. I love that case because it’s got a great backstory to it. But the with the lift, they wanted to put in a new, you know, modern thing with a glass thing, instead of some old clunker. But the really, all the things were nothing to do with safety. They were about efficiency and, you know, esthetics and in that it ended up going to the Supreme Court. It ended up being, they said, Well, you can maintain what’s there. There’s not it’s capable of being repaired. So that’s all you’ve got to do repair it. That’s the minimum required to meet their obligations.

Jimmy  24:22

All right, interesting. I’m moving on to another subject. Can an ordinary owner take a strata manager to fair trading or the tribunal for failure to adequately perform their duties

David  26:33

Well It I guess anyone can complain to Fair Trading, in the sense that, you know, fair trading as a government instrumentality, and there are parts within Fair Trading that are administering the performance of strata managers. So let’s say, for example, there was a strata manager who was misappropriating or misusing owners, corporations, money, and that was something that needed to be brought to the attention of the licensing authorities. Then, of course, an owner can do that. They can they can get information from anybody. If the object is to try and change the strata management agreement or ask NCAT to make orders to terminate the strata managing agent,  then the limitations are in… there’s a section about it, and it says the application can only be made by the owners Corporation.

Jimmy  27:26

Yeah, so, so basically, the answer is, no, the an ordinary owner can’t do that.

David  27:31

Well, they can’t take them to NCAT, and when they say for failure to adequately perform their duties, another thing that I’m constantly reminding people about is a strata manager has a contract with an owner’s corporation that has a limited range of duties that they’re performing. And generally they’ll say that they’re required to do these things, and there are a whole bunch of other things that they will do as and when requested, but generally by the strata committee. So the number of times you hear the strata managers uncooperative that “I asked these documents 20 times, they haven’t given them to me, ” or there’s nothing that says owners a strata manager’s job is not to find documents that owners want and send them to them by email. That’s not their task, nor is it their task to inspect the roof to see whether it needs to be repaired, or to even say to the owners corporation, wow, this is a legal problem. I think you need to get legal advice. Like they don’t need to do that. They’re not the manager in that sense, they’re providing management services to owners corporations under a contract, and that contract is with the owners Corporation, not with individual owners.

Jimmy  28:37

Okay, in a four unit scheme or a small scheme, a resident owner has appointed themselves, quote, strata manager, unquote, and has started issuing breach notices to tenants. What’s the easiest way to get them to pull their head in

David  28:53

Look issuing a notice has to be a notice to comply with a by-law will comes from a resolution of the owners corporation, so that’s what comes or a resolution of the strata committee, or that power can be delegated to the strata manager. The fact that someone calls himself a strata manager doesn’t make them a strata manager. A strata manager needs to be appointed under Section 49 of the Act, and that there’s got to be an agreement, there’s got to be a resolution at a general meeting. If somebody’s doing it, and they’re doing it sort of off the bat themselves, then the breach notices really don’t have any power at all, because they’re not properly authorized from the beginning. The easiest way to get them to pull their head in is like, I don’t know, it depends what’s actually motivating them to behave in this way. But the reality is that the notice issued in that way has no effect whatsoever, valid notice.

Jimmy  29:50

I think the problem is that it’s in this case, the the investor owners tenants are saying this person keeps sending us letters and breach notices and. They say that the strata manager, and are they and what can we do? And it sounds like the answer might be, send them a letter saying you are not the strata manager and stop doing this.

David  30:09

Yeah, sure. I mean, I can’t, if I might agree by people speeding down my street. I can’t take it upon myself to issue people with speeding fines. We don’t have CITIZENS ARREST, or these sorts of things in strata, there’s just a process there for getting it done,

Jimmy  30:27

Probably just as well that we can’t do that.

David  30:32

Well, that’s what I think, although sometimes you do see these things being abused, and there certainly are situations where there’s a single person strata committee, and maybe that’s the price people pay of refusing to participate in that democratic process if they want to delegate the authority to a single person, and then they abuse that power in a particular way by issuing, in this example, a notice to comply when you know it seems as though a different decision could be made. Well, that’s it. If it’s authorized, it’s authorized, the consequences will flow from that.

Jimmy  31:02

Okay, we’re just about out of time. Just a quick one. What can an owner do if their proposed motion for an upcoming AGM is not listed on the agenda?

David  31:11

Well, once the notice is issued, then that’s the note. I mean, they can ask the strata manager to issue a supplementary notice of meeting. That’s that’s probably the most practical way of doing it, and I’m assuming this that there was an oversight. Might have been a request made nine months before the notice of meeting was issued, and people just forgot about it. Didn’t have their admin set up properly to be able to make sure it was picked up, but if it is drawn to their attention, because there’s an absolute right for the owner under, I think it’s clause four of schedule one to have a motion put on the agenda of the next meeting. So yes, they could rush off to NCAT and get an order to get that rectified, I guess, if they wanted to. But most of the time, where I see, you know, people wanting to get things on, not necessarily in this situation, but sometimes for good reasons. I just missed the deadline. Usually, a supplementary notice of meeting can be issued.

Jimmy  32:07

Okay, David, we are one minute away because I’m too cheap to buy the professional version of zoom, of which I might change. But thanks very much for that. That’s been really enlightening. Your website is sglawyers.com.au is that correct?

David  32:23

Yeah, it is. It is Jimmy, yes.

Jimmy  32:25

And people who are listening to this can find out more of the stuff that you handle on your website as ever. I mean, we’ve been doing this on and off for years, and it’s great to hear from you.

David  32:36

Yeah, good. Thanks, Jimmy.

Jimmy  32:37

Thanks very much, David. We’ll talk. Okay, that was David Sachs of Sachs Gerace lawyers, one of our sponsors, really interesting chat there and shedding some light on some of the issues that have come up in the forum. As you heard, we did that on Zoom, and that would explain why some of the sound quality isn’t up to our usual standards. Talking of our usual standards, Sue Williams will be back in our little studio next week, and we will be bringing the flat chat wrap to you once again. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to the flat chat wrap podcast. You’ll find links to the stories and other references on our website, flatchat.com.au, and if you haven’t already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite pod catcher. Just search for flat chat wrap with a W. Click on Subscribe, and you’ll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week you.