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Topic
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Does the new proxy limit mean that proxies appointing the Chairman of the Meeting as the proxy holder will be invalid if more than the allowed maximum are held by the chair?
I can’t see anything in the legislation that excludes the chair from the limit.
If that’s the case then the procedure our SM is proposing for the upcoming EGM of simply collecting proxies in favour of the chair, and only the chair needing to be present, will not work.
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In the ACT, the chair is exempt from the proxy limit. I don’t know about elsewhere.
If the proposal is to have a ‘paper meeting’, which I would only do for an uncontroversial matter, owners could do an absentee vote (at least in the ACT) rather than appoint a proxy to vote on their behalf. There is no limit on how many absentee votes there can be.
When proxy limits were introduced in the ACT, it was quickly followed by an amendment that allowed excess proxies to be transferred to the chair in order to avoid disenfranchising owners who had appointed a proxy while possibly unaware that their intended proxy had too many.
Yes, in NSW the chair has no exemptions, and no special functions. Each owner present at the meeting for a NSW strata building can only have the maximum number of proxies used to vote. But if there are 44 lots in the strata plan, and twelve of them assign their proxies to the owner who is (or was – since at the AGM all committee members and offices become vacant) the chair, then he can only vote 2 of them, as well as voting for himself. If he is the only owner at the meeting, then, surprisingly, there is a quorum, which is a quarter of the owners (ie, more than 10) present either in person or by valid proxy. But the chair can only have 3 votes, himself and the maximum permitted number of proxies (5% which is 2 in this example). If he is the only owner actually present, then the agenda items will be passed, as 3 votes for and none against. But if you organise 4 other owners to attend, and they can roll the chair, as their 4 votes will beat the chair’s 3.
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