The LNP government is under pressure to introduce new laws to stop dodgy dealings in Queensland's body corporate sector. There are also calls for "strata title cops" to police compliance after the state was hailed as the "wild west" due to lax laws.
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00:00Queensland's been hailed the Wild West when it comes to strata law.
00:07Just ask the former commissioner, whose job it was to investigate allegations of shady
00:11commissions, even corruption.
00:14There's no government inspectors, there's no strata cops on the beat in Queensland.
00:19I think that's a real problem.
00:21Chris Irons says anyone can become a manager with little fallout, even if they're caught
00:27fudging the books.
00:28It means that tomorrow you or I could go out there and say, I'm a strata manager now,
00:34I would like your work, I would also like to be a signatory to your bank account and
00:38have control over it.
00:39And there's no regulation over that.
00:42We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars being managed by around 55,000 body corporates
00:48with no trust accounts, not even any licensing required.
00:52You quickly think, did I make a mistake of buying into this resort, you know, what have
00:56I done here?
00:57Retiree Michael Dopking spent years fighting his body corporate at Hope Island for access
01:03to the accounts.
01:04It was our money, our community money, we're talking millions of dollars.
01:08And it appeared that because the way the structure of the accounts was set up, the committee
01:13could not even have access or see the accounts.
01:16If we don't have much stricter law around the operation of the body corporates, we're
01:21going to have story after story of greed and misuse of funds.
01:29Gold Coast resident Chris Griffiths says even with a QCAT win, which found his building's
01:34committee invested more than a million dollars in a procedural vacuum and with a lack of
01:39records got tied up in an appeal.
01:42So there's a case in point where there is an adjudication process, but even if you win
01:48the adjudication, it doesn't necessarily mean you've won the day at all.
01:51Now Fair Trading says, look, there are conflict of interest and disclosure requirements, as
01:56well as a mandatory code of conduct.
01:59It has no consequence though, it has no teeth, so it means nothing.
02:03The ex-commissioner says tough regulation, including huge fines like we see in New South
02:08Wales, is an absolute must.
02:11It's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.