Page 3685 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 26 August 2008
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communications officers. Sections 55J to 55V set out rules for service contractors and financiers.
One of the concerns raised with us is that these rules are very prescriptive and cannot be altered by the unit owners. There was a concern that these rules may not be suitable for all owners corporations. One constituent at the community meeting held on this issue described it as the nanny-state approach of the Stanhope government.
Previously, the Unit Titles Act has dealt with many of these matters through having default articles of incorporation for owners corporations. These default articles are set out in regulations that apply to an owners corporation unless they choose to amend them by special resolution. This meant that unit owners could alter these rules to suit their own circumstances by a special resolution. Under the new approach many of these rules will be enshrined in legislation and cannot be altered by the owners corporation regardless of how many unit owners agree.
My staff asked ACTPLA officials what was the rationale for these changes. They said that the new provisions were being added because managers and others were not clear on their functions. When asked why these rules were being added as legislative provisions instead of as default articles of incorporation, which would make them just as clear but which could be amended by special resolution of unit owners, ACTPLA officials had no explanation. We were just told again that managers and others were not clear on their functions.
New sections 62 and 63 of the bill establish a requirement for owners corporations to prepare a plan of anticipated sinking fund expenditure 10 years in advance and approve this plan by ordinary resolution. The bill also includes requirements to review this plan. This requirement seems to me to micromanage aspects of running a body corporate that are best left to the articles of incorporation.
I will not be supporting this bill at this point, and I urge other members in this place not to do so. At the very least, I would hope that members would vote against the bill until the issues raised by large numbers of constituents have been satisfactorily resolved. I acknowledge that the government’s efforts at the 11th hour of this bill have been better and that some concerns have been addressed, but I still feel that there are too many uncertainties that need to be addressed to offer this bill my support. I do appreciate that the minister has tried to work cooperatively with us, but the fact that the implementation date for this has blown out quite a bit is a pretty fair indication that there is still a high level of angst and uncertainty out there.
The minister showed me an email he had from someone who was very content. I am sure he will refer to it in his speech; he has given me a copy. But I had an email tonight signed off by a couple of people who attended the meeting I held the other day. They said:
Thank you for your work so far.
We, the ‘consumers’ who own and live in unit title properties, continue to be extremely concerned that the ACT Government intends to push the Units Title Amendments Bill through the Assembly before it rises as we will be saddled with legislation that includes discriminatory, inequitable and adversarial conditions …
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