Lately I've taken to lurking in strata chat rooms, reading what owners say about strata managers when they think no one from the industry is listening. These groups have their biases. Few people log on to praise a job well done. What you find instead is bitterness, suspicion, and a fair dose of conspiracy theory.

Even so, it's been fertile ground for lessons in what not to do. One practice comes up again and again: agenda hijacking. It happens when a manager publishes a general meeting agenda containing self-serving motions the committee never approved.

What is agenda hijacking?

Agenda hijacking is the practice of a manager drafting and circulating motions that benefit the manager, without first putting them to the committee for sign-off. The manager holds the pen, controls the agenda, and uses that position to write themselves into a more profitable arrangement, all before an owner has had a chance to object.

What do these motions look like?

These motions look ordinary on the page, which is exactly the problem. Three examples kept surfacing in the threads I read. The first, a motion to reappoint the manager for a further three years, tabled by the manager rather than requested by the committee. The second, a motion requiring owners to use only contractors certified as compliant by the manager, where the contractor pays the manager afee for that certification. Finally, a motion adopting an elaborate debt collection process that generates fees for the manager and directs legal recovery work to a law firm the manager owns.

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Why does this cross a line?

This crosses a line because it compounds injury with insult. The injury is the obvious conflict of interest: the person drafting the motion stands to profit from its passing. The insult is the liberty taken by whoever holds the pen, publishing a proposal in the owners' name that the owners never asked for and the committee never approved. Trust in strata rests on the assumption that the person preparing the agenda is working for the building, not for themselves.

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What about the agenda clutter that isn't self-serving?

The agenda clutter that isn't self-serving is usually just lazy. Motions get copied from one agenda to the next until repetition passes for rigour, regardless of which firm is doing the copying. Queensland's standard module sets out a modest list of motions a general meeting must include. Plenty of agendas run to several times that number, most of it being template filler with no bearing on the building in question. At some point, this drift got called best practice, but it was really just the most copied approach.

Who pays the price for a bloated agenda?

Volunteers pay the price for a bloated agenda. Every extra motion is another few minutes a committee member must read, question, and vote on, on top of a job most of them do for nothing. Time spent wading through filler is time not spent on maintenance planning, budgets, or the genuine business of the building. A busy agenda isn't a sign of thoroughness. It's a tax on the people doing this work for the common good.

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What should owners do about it?

Given strata managers’ proclivity to issue agendas without prior committee review, committees must insist on receiving a draft agenda. Then, they must read every line the way they would a contract, because in every sense that matters, it is one. Owners must also do what any careful reader does with a contract: read every motion in advance of the meeting, not during. If in doubt, ask who benefits from each motion and whether the committee approved it in that form.

None of this requires a change in the law. It requires committees willing to ask an uncomfortable question before they sign off on next year's business, and managers willing to answer it. The chat rooms are full of owners who found out too late. Reading them is how the rest of us stay ahead of the same mistake.

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