Canberra Puts Strata Managers on Notice

Strata management in the ACT is facing its biggest shake-up in years. On 29 April 2026, the ACT Legislative Assembly's Standing Committee on Legal Affairs handed down the final report of a year-long inquiry into how strata properties are run in the territory. It landed with 33 recommendations and a blunt message to operators who have been coasting: the days of light-touch oversight are ending.

The inquiry was prompted by a booming apartment sector and a steady stream of complaints from owners - people who couldn't get records about their own buildings, who felt pressured to let defects slide, and who found the company managing their home difficult to even get on the phone.

What the committee recommended

The headline reform is a mandatory licensing scheme for individual strata managers, backed by formal training and qualification requirements. For an occupation that has operated with almost no barrier to entry - while managing multi-million-dollar budgets for buildings of hundreds of apartments - that is a structural change, not a tweak.

Among the 33 recommendations, the committee also called for:

• Standardised strata management contracts;
• A no-cause right of termination, so an owners corporation can exit a management agreement without having to prove fault;
• Stronger disclosure of the commissions managers earn;
• Real estate advertising to disclose ordinary and special levies up front, so buyers know the true cost before they bid;
• A right for renting tenants to attend annual general meetings; and
• A dedicated Strata Commissioner.

The Strata Commissioner

The Commissioner is the recommendation with the most political momentum behind it. It has support across the major parties and formed part of independent MLA Thomas Emerson's supply-and-confidence agreement with the ACT Government, which had already committed to establishing the role by July 2026.

As envisaged, the Commissioner would resolve disputes - an alternative to dragging matters through the territory's civil tribunal - and take on an education role for the volunteer committees that run most buildings. The open question is resourcing. Owners' advocates have warned that a Commissioner without adequate funding and enforcement teeth will be a sign on a door rather than a remedy.

The commission question

The inquiry's most contested issue was insurance commissions - the payments strata managers collect for placing owners' insurance. The committee heard these can account for up to 30 per cent of a strata company's income. One ACT firm told the inquiry it would lose money on every unit it managed if commissions disappeared; another said it would have to raise its fees to compensate.

Owners see it differently: a manager paid by the insurer has little reason to hunt down the cheapest cover for the building. The committee stopped short of recommending a ban, opting for fuller disclosure instead. For owners who wanted the practice abolished, that is a half-measure - sunlight, but not a cure.

What happens next

The ACT Government's formal response to the report is due on 29 August 2026. Recommendations are not law, and the distance between a committee's wish list and a working regulatory regime can be considerable. But the direction is unmistakable, and it is the same direction New South Wales has already taken.

For owners everywhere - including here in South Australia - the ACT inquiry is one more entry in a national pattern. The traditional strata model is under sustained scrutiny, and "that's just how it's always been done" is no longer a good enough answer.