Question: Problems like committee members acting in their own interest, and owners struggling to get a fair hearing, have survived decades of law reform. Will mandatory committee training actually change that?
Many problems in strata governance, like committee members acting in their own interest or owners struggling to get a fair hearing, have persisted for decades despite previous legislative changes.
How confident is the government that mandatory training will shift that dysfunction, when the issues go well beyond a simple lack of knowledge?
Answer: There is no silver bullet, but training creates a consistent base level of understanding that works alongside education, advice, dispute resolution and enforcement.
I think it’s important to recognise that there is no silver bullet for fixing the problems in strata. What we’re trying to do at the regulator is come at it from a number of different angles to hopefully use the right combination of education, advice and enforcement where required, as well as supporting general dispute resolution.
So what I think this training does is it creates a consistent level playing field as far as a base level of understanding.
When I look at a lot of the common disputes that come through our mediation or our complaints line, it’s clear that the owners or the strata committee members haven’t taken the time to get to a common understanding of what they’re required to do and what the problem is.
We hope this module and successive modules will really help to do that. The other thing that we really hope is that the Strata Hub generally is rolling out tools and resources to help to get to that common understanding of what the problem is.
If information and training doesn’t solve the problem, we’ve got a number of other levers that we can use. Our mediation service, we did 1,300 last financial year. We’ve got thousands of complaints come in where we’re actively working through the problems with owners and the like.
That said, I recognise that culture in strata is something that we need to do more on, and it’s something that, as the Commissioner, I’m looking at: what can we do in addition to training and enforcement and dispute resolution to get people to the point where harmony is the expected standard, not the exception.
This post appears in the November 2026 edition of The NSW Strata Magazine.
Angus Abadee
NSW Fair Trading
E: angus.abadee@customerservice.nsw.gov.au
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