Room to move in strata law reform

This is the comment piece that ran alongside the news story in the Herald on November 4.

‘Lord, give me the courage to change what I can, the serenity to endure what I can’t and the wisdom to know the difference’.  It would be easy to imagine Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts has some version of the Serenity Prayer taped to his desk.

After more than a year of consultation, with everyone from professional bodies and pressure groups to single-issue obsessive nutters having their say, his roadmap for the proposed revolution in strata law is on the table, albeit in broad strokes rather than line by line detail.

From possible bans on smoking on balconies to secret ballots and an end to the blight of proxy farming, this is a huge step forward for a state where one third of the population lives or works in strata, that proportion rising to half in the next 20 years.

The Labor party never quite embraced the importance of strata owners and residents – as opposed to developers and their mates –  and as the conga-line of corruption weaves it way through ICAC, you can understand why.

Even so, it’s a little surprising that a politician from the Coalition has driven what is possibly the state’s single most significant social reform so far this Century.  But Anthony Roberts knows it’s not often that an individual politician of any hue gets a chance to change society.

Forget that he’s from the Right; as the American political adage goes, only Nixon could go to China.

So what do these changes mean? They range from the hot-button issues like pets, smoking and noisy flooring to fundamental adjustments to the way those of us who live in strata – and Mr Roberts is one of us – run our communities.

But the big picture shows a return to democracy for what the minister himself calls the fourth tier of government. Strata managers, building managers and letting agents will not be able to sit on executive committees but tenants will (and you can hear owners’ quills being angrily sharpened at that one.)

Unachievable quorum numbers for meetings are being removed and we will be able to use smartphones and tablets not just to vote but actually participate in discussions via the internet. The autocratic chairman ruling his or her personal fiefdom with a stack of proxy votes is about deleted by a wired constituency where the majority – tenants – need no longer be silent.

Admittedly extinguishment of strata title – aka urban regeneration or greedy developers throwing granny out of her flat, depending on your POV – was not on the menu.  Neither were short term lets in residential buildings or the inability to clamp or tow rogue parkers.

But these issues intersect with several other government departments, requiring a lot of political horse trading before any new laws can be locked down.

It’s to the minister’s credit that he’s applied the pragmatism of the Serenity Prayer to this task, changing the things that he can while at least moving those pricklier issues from the too-hard basket to the back burner.