One Year On
We have just celebrated the first anniversary of the launch of Strata Community Australia, and took a moment to reflect on our progress during this past frenetic year.
Just over a year ago SCA was at best an alliance of like-minded but essentially stand-alone organisations, separately promoting their own agendas with limited resources and support. Today, we are united under one banner with a shared agenda and a strong sense of collaboration and common focus on our goals and aspirations for the strata sector.
The raised national profile has been demonstrated in our key role in driving reform of strata insurance in north Queensland and in the recent awarding of the largest federal grant to any single industry sector to promote energy efficiency. It also means at state level our influence has never been stronger, for example through the current review of strata laws in NSW and behind moves for a licensing regime in WA.
The way they have put aside old rivalries and come together to achieve all this is primarily a tribute to the strength of leadership and purpose at state level. The new accreditation framework is evidence of this. The new accreditation program is designed to provide recognition of strata management as a profession. It will be operational from early 2013 and responds to the growing demands for consumers that all their professional service providers – not just doctors, lawyers and accountants – should have recognised and verifiable qualifications and experience. They also expect professionals to adhere to appropriate standards of ethics and to be continually updating their knowledge.
We are confident that consumers will reward strata managers who climb the accreditation ladder. That’s certainly been the experience in the United States where a well-established professional pathway translates into higher fees for those businesses who support staff to improve their qualifications and higher salaries for the staff as they move up the ladder.
SCA continues to engage with the federal government on the issue of the cost of residential strata insurance in North Queensland. At the end of June the federal government released its response to the report on its investigation into the high cost of strata-title insurance. SCA welcomed the response especially the support for a 12-month moratorium on stamp duty charged on strata title insurance in North Queensland.
We said that the federal government must now strongly encourage the Queensland government to enact this moratorium and give some relief to those apartment owners in North Queensland who are doing it tough. Any relief for apartment owners would be very welcome at this point in time however there is a long way to go before the crisis could be considered over.
We have come far with a lot more to do. Watch this space.
James Freestun
SCA
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