Why were changes made that limit the power of the committee chairpersons?

The body corporate must elect a committee at each annual general meeting. The committee is made up of lot owners or people who act for them.

The committee is in charge of:

  • the administrative and day-to-day running of the body corporate
  • making decisions on behalf of the body corporate
  • putting the lawful decisions of the body corporate into place.

The committee can make decisions by calling a committee meeting or by voting outside a committee meeting.

Unless otherwise stated, the following information applies to schemes under the:

  • Standard Module
  • Accommodation Module
  • Commercial Module.

Committee members

A committee must have at least 3 members.

The maximum number of committee members for schemes with 7 or more lots is 7. If there are less than 7 lots, the maximum is the same as the number of lots.

The committee will usually include a chairperson, secretary and treasurer (known as the executive positions). A person may hold all or any 2 executive positions.

For schemes under the Small Schemes Module, the committee consists of a maximum of 2 members. It will only include a secretary and treasurer. A person may hold both positions at the same time.

For schemes under the Specified Two-lot Schemes Module there is no committee.

Learn more about forming a body corporate committee.

Chairperson

The chairperson must chair all general meetings and committee meetings they attend. If the chairperson is not at a meeting, the voters who are there can choose another person to chair that meeting.

When chairing a general meeting, the chairperson’s duties include:

  • ruling a motion out of order if
    • it is unlawful or unenforceable
    • it conflicts with a by-law
    • the substance of the motion was not included in the agenda for the meeting
  • declaring the results of votes on motions at the meeting
  • confirming that each ballot paper is the vote of a person who has the right to vote in the election (where a ballot for a committee position is needed)
  • declaring the result of an election for a committee position.

If the chairperson rules a motion out of order they must give reasons, and give the meeting the chance to overturn their decision. The reasons must be included in the minutes of the meeting.

The chairperson does not have more authority than anyone else on the committee.

Secretary

The secretary’s duties include:

  • sending out notices for meetings
  • asking for and receiving nominations for committee positions before an annual general meeting. If a notice inviting nominations is forwarded to lot owners, the secretary must also invite owners to submit motions for the meeting
  • making the ballot papers for the committee election, and sending them and the other material with the meeting notices
  • having all of the following available for viewing by voters at a general meeting
    • the roll
    • a list of the people who have the right to vote at the meeting
    • all proxy forms and voting papers
  • receiving the completed voting papers for a general meeting
  • receiving the completed proxy forms for general and committee meetings.

The secretary often takes minutes of meetings, although the legislation does not require them to.

Treasurer

The treasurer’s duties under the legislation are limited.

If there is no body corporate manager, the committee may ask the treasurer to create a reconciliation statement.

If the body corporate passes an ordinary resolution requesting a statement, it must be prepared within 21 days of the last day of each month and—for each account kept for the administrative and sinking fund—show the reconciliation of:

  • a statement from the financial institution(s) showing the amounts going in and out of the account during the month
  • invoices and other documents for payments into and out of the account during the month.

A treasurer may prepare budgets, manage funds and prepare levy notices, although the legislation does not require them to.

Body corporate manager

If the body corporate has engaged a body corporate manager, it may authorise the manager to carry out some or all of the powers of the committee .

Non-voting members of the committee

If the body corporate engages a body corporate manager or a caretaking service contractor, they are automatically non-voting members of the committee.

A non-voting member does not have a right to vote on committee decisions.

Restrictions on committee decisions

The committee cannot make decisions about:

  • setting or changing a body corporate levy
  • changing the rights, privileges or obligations of lot owners
  • decisions that must be made by ordinary resolution, special resolution, resolution without dissent, or majority resolution
  • starting a legal proceeding, unless it is
    • to recover a liquidated debt against the owner of a lot
    • related to a proceeding where the body corporate is already a party
    • for an offence under the by-law contravention provisions of the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997
    • a dispute resolution application lodged with us
  • paying money to committee members unless it is
    • less than $50 incurred by a committee member attending a committee meeting
    • not more than $300 reimbursed to a committee member in a 12-month period.

See sections 52 and 53 of the Standard Module for more information.

Committee spending limit

Committee spending is restricted and money must be available in the budget before they can spend it.

If there is not enough money in the funds, the committee would have to call a general meeting to amend the budget or to raise a special levy.

Read about how to remove a committee member from the committee for a breach of code of conduct or other reasons.

More information

Find out more about:

  • committee voting
  • running a committee meeting
  • calling a committee meeting.

Committee chairs have long been considered power brokers for lawmaking. But in the recently completed 116th Congress, their lawmaking effectiveness continued a downward slide.

How do you measure lawmaking effectiveness? At the Center for Effective Lawmaking, we developed a scoring system that combines fifteen metrics, capturing how many public bills each member of Congress introduces, how far those bills advance through the lawmaking process and how substantively significant they are. We use these scores to rank every member - relative to one another, relative to benchmarks and within 21 issue areas - in their lawmaking success.

This month, we released our Legislative Effectiveness Scores for every member of the House and Senate in 2019-20. The scores reveal many broad patterns, including the declining power of committee and subcommittee chairs. For example, over the past two years, House committee and subcommittee chairs on average produced only 1.3 and 0.6 laws, respectively, from the bills that they introduced.

Put another way, eight House committee chairs (of the 23 members who held a chair) and more than half of all House subcommittee chairs did not have a single bill they sponsored become law.

At first, this low productivity might seem expected or even justified, if you consider that only 2.5 percent of the more than 9,000 bills introduced into the 116th House became law. But when you compare the lawmaking performance of committee and subcommittee chairs with that of other members of Congress over time, the picture changes drastically.

For example, consider the Legislative Effectiveness Scores in the U.S. Senate. In 2019-20, Senate subcommittee and committee chairs were about 10 percent or 40 percent more effective as lawmakers than an average senator, respectively. But slightly better than average does not constitute a major source of power and influence. Because we have applied our methodology for every Congress back to the early 1970s, we can get a sense of how far chairs have fallen.

To make the comparisons across members easy, we scale the average effectiveness scores in each Congress to a value of 1.0. In the 116th Senate, subcommittee chairs averaged 1.1 and committee chairs averaged 1.4. From the 1970s through the 1990s, however, Senate committee chairs averaged above 2.3 and subcommittee chairs averaged 1.5. These gaps above the average senator among chairs thus used to be three to five times larger than they are today.

House committee chairs in the 1970s through 1990s sponsored an average of 3.6 bills that became law per Congress - nearly three times as many as today. In other words, committee chairs used to be much more effective at lawmaking, both in relative and absolute terms.

Much of this decline can be traced back to the 1990s. That's when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and the Republican majority adopted reforms to seize power away from committees and consolidate it with majority party leadership. Those reforms included imposing term limits on committee and subcommittee chairs and formulating many major policy proposals outside of the committee process. Regular order became less regular.

Republicans introducing the reforms believed that lawmaking led by party leaders would establish a coherent brand that could help capture or retain majority control in the next Congress. And Democrats followed suit in both the House and Senate.

Some effects of these reforms were felt immediately, but others accumulated over time. For example, the average Legislative Effectiveness Score of committee chairs in the Senate has fallen in each of the last six Congresses. Additionally, the reforms affected not just the chairs, but all members who benefited from strong committees.

Individual lawmakers who used to build up expertise within committees have become more scattered in their proposals across issue areas in recent Congresses. And it's worth noting that such declining specialization is linked to lower lawmaking success.

Certainly, there are some committee chairs who continue to take a lead in lawmaking. For example, the top score (10.3) in the 116th House was achieved by former Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), who chaired the Appropriations Committee. But in the Senate, the top lawmaker was neither a committee chair nor a subcommittee chair. Indeed, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) achieved the unprecedented feat of being the overall top lawmaker while serving in the minority party.

Both the House and the Senate are considering reforms to promote more effective lawmaking. The House has reestablished the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress to consider reforms to its internal workings. And the Senate is considering filibuster reform - which will likely have profound consequences for lawmaking - among other changes. Given how far committees and their chairs have fallen since the days when they took the lead in lawmaking, perhaps restoring some of their prominence would offer additional opportunities for Congress to address America's greatest public policy challenges.