Fee class action frozen
A CLASS action to change law empowering body corporate committees to overturn judge-made lotfee decisions has been placed on hold following indications the State Government may take action.
The move comes after AttorneyGeneral Jarrod Bleijie said the law, introduced by the Bligh Government, disregarded the fact that changes to lot entitlements had occurred through ‘‘specialist adjudications or the District Court to determine fairness’’.
Gold Coast lawyer Anthony Delaney, who has been spearheading the legal challenge, said yesterday the class-action committee met on Friday and decided to place the challenge on hold. ‘‘We considered all the information available to us and we do not believe the class action is necessary at this time.
‘‘We will be putting all our efforts into working with the government to reinstate adjudication based on the fair-and-equitable principle and recourse to appeal.
‘‘We believe the present legislation will either be repealed or amended.’’
Mr Bleijie last week told an Archers Body Corporate Management seminar at Mooloolaba that Queensland was in the ‘‘ridiculous situation where the previous government kept changing the rules every few years’’.
‘‘The latest revision, the threeyear opportunity to revert almost automatically, without even going to a vote of the body corporate, to original lot entitlements, is particularly strange given that this change is in total disregard to the fact that changed lot entitlements had been worked out through specialist adjudications or the District Court to determine fairness,’’ online media reported him as saying. Mr Bleijie was more circumspect yesterday, saying that sharing body corporate costs had been under serious review since March and ‘‘the competing views and the commercial and financial implications of all options merit full consideration’’.
Mr Bleijie said it was not in the community’s interest for the government to rush to put in place a new system. ‘‘The government is looking to provide the right policy balance in circumstances where personal and public interests may be irreconcilable,’’ he said.
The present law allows an owner to lodge a motion with the body corporate committee calling for a reversion to unit fees set by developers.
It replaces earlier law enabling judges and adjudicators to determine whether body corporate fees were fair and equitable.
Except in limited circumstances, it effectively makes body corporate rejection of the motion an offence and denies other owners the right to oppose the change.
Reversion is made without reference to fairness or recourse to appeal by affected parties and is seen by the Queensland Law Society as denying natural justice.