A Hung Strata Parliament ...

Watching final few days of the Federal Election 2010 and see the hung parliament outcome made me think of the same thing in strata and whether the same things could happen there too.

All strata schemes hold annual elections to elect a committee from owners or owners' nominees.

But, unlike the Australian Federal Election voting is not mandatory and only a proportion of owners actually vote each year for their committees.

And, if owners have not paid their levies, owe other money or have not properly registered their ownership with the strata scheme or don’t properly prepare or lodge a proxy their vote is not counted … a bit like an informal or invalid vote.

There is not the same style of electioneering in strata committee elections but candidates to canvass support, proxies and make election campaign speeches (often at the Annual General Meeting where the election occurs).

And, like the Federal Election, owners only get to vote for the committee as a whole to run the scheme and the committee choose the Chairperson, Secretary an Treasurer.

So, things in strata are not that different to the real world of politics.

Now that I think about it more I can think of a few strata schemes that have looked like the new Federal political landscape with –

• a committees of 9
• two factions of 3 members each who are diametrically opposed to each other on everything,
• 1 committee member who is green and wants to save the planet, and
• 2 other committee members who are only there to pursue one issue and are wild cards on everything else

making decisions at committee meeting uncertain and variable.

Sound familiar ???

I guess that in both cases whatever happens there’s still a strata scheme (or country) left at the end of their term for the next group to deal with ...


BTW ... here's an Interactive Representation of Federal Seats from the 2010 Federal Election.

Francesco …