President’s Report – Summer 20/21

Like many of our members I was relieved to see the back of 2020 and spend some quality time with family and friends relaxing over the summer break and take time to assess the events of the past year and commence planning for the year ahead.

A quick recap of the last couple of months of the year saw several states and chapters hold their annual awards and a big congratulations to all the winners who will now be moving onto the National awards.

It was also AGM season for SCA, and I would like to welcome Joshua Baldwin who was elected as the new small aggregated member Director, congratulations also to Gregor Evans, Ian D’Arcy, and Stephen Brell who were all re-elected to the national board. Several new State/Chapter presidents were also appointed and congratulations to Shelley Mulherin (ACT), Sally Bevis (TAS), Catherine Lezer (WA) and Gregor Evans (VIC). I look forward to working them in 2021.

In December, SCA with the assistance of a facilitator held several meetings to finalise the strategic plan for the next three years. This included representatives from all SCA states and Chapters, and consultation with several of the large multi-state members and our business partners. The collaboration with the various groups was vital to ensure that our strategy moving forward aligned and our vision for SCA, and the strata industry as a whole, was in line with that of our stakeholders.

A number of areas of inconsistency between jurisdictions were noted including management agreements, services provided, educational requirements, legislation and regulation, expectations from members/owners, representation of various members, fees/CPD variations just to name a few.

The result has been a very comprehensive three-year strategy document that will take SCA into the future with clear direction. A detailed summary of the strategy can be found further in this magazine.

Looking forward into 2021 our focus will be on transforming the reputation of the industry by increasing our brand awareness, providing better education for members and increasing our advocacy.

Our new accreditation policy comes into effect in February and education will be a priority in particular getting the Cert IV completed and made available to all members. The NSW Professional Standards Scheme will hopefully commence end of year, and this will be closely watched with anticipation.

We are planning to hold a number of Leading Change forums with topics around digital disruption and post pandemic review/future planning. We will also have our national conference in June and several smaller leadership events with particular focus around business practice and collaboration.

Cladding, legislative reviews and engagement with other groups will also be high on the agenda. As previously mentioned SCA has formed a National Strata Insurance Task Force with focus on key areas in particular the availability of Insurance in Northern Australia, the cost of premiums and the value of strata managers in the insurance process. After a selection process SCA appointed Deakin University, and in particular Nicole Johnston, to prepare a research paper into Strata Insurance and we anticipate that this paper will be finalised by 30 April 2021. Consultation with members is vital in this process and we have already had several surveys of which I thank everyone who contributed, further surveys will be forthcoming, and I encourage you to contribute as this is an issue that affects all stakeholders. We look forward to sharing details of this paper in due course and then commencing a strong advocacy campaign to effect change.

As I continue to say the support of our business partners is vital to SCA both financially and by offering their various expertise on committees and I encourage you to in turn support our partners BCB, CHU, Grace Lawyers, Macquarie Bank and Strata Energy Services together with our education partner Kelly + Partners, and business partner nbn.

As national president I am very happy with how SCA has progressed over the past 12 months in particular the collaboration and unity that has been shown between all states and chapters together with the increased communication between all stakeholders, this of course would not have been possible without the strong leadership shown by our CEO Alisha Fisher and her team together with the will of the State/Chapter boards whom I thank and look forward to continuing to work with in 2021.

Our industry is based around the concept of community and harmonisation and SCA will continue to promote this by engaging with external stakeholders, educating and advocating on behalf of members.

Strata Community Association – The unified, dominant voice of Strata in Australia and New Zealand.