Victoria's strata regulator hasn't prosecuted in ten years. South Australia doesn't have one.

Between July 2016 and June 2026, Consumer Affairs Victoria received more than 3,500 complaints about owners corporations. In that decade it did not bring a single civil or criminal prosecution against one.

The figures, released this month under freedom of information laws and reported on the front page of The Sunday Age on 27 Sep 2026, show four infringement notices over the ten years, the most recent in 2019–20, and 12 official warnings. In the past three years the regulator referred 26 owners corporation complaints to its internal intelligence team for assessment. None led to further action.

The Victorian Greens have referred the numbers to the state's Auditor-General, and the acting Auditor-General has told them his office will consider an audit.

One building, from the inside

The Age built its report around a ten-storey apartment building in Carlton. A retired owner there went to Consumer Affairs Victoria with a substantial file alleging that three committee members had arranged a $240,000 payment, in annual instalments of $24,000 from 2022 to 2032, to a company in which they held a financial interest. The payment was made under a deed of surrender of lease over a ground-floor office. He alleges the deed was never put to a vote of lot owners, the committee members never declared their interest, and the instalments were reported in the audited accounts as caretaker expenses.

The regulator declined to investigate at this stage. It told him it acts in the wider public interest rather than to obtain redress for individuals, and suggested the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal as the forum. He has since filed a claim there. These allegations have not been tested, the people named in the reporting did not respond to The Age, and nothing here is a view on how the tribunal should decide.

Some details are worth drawing out whatever the outcome. The building's auditor had not been told about the deed, and told the owner that a sum of that size probably called for a special resolution of 75 per cent of members. A former committee chair says he resigned in November 2024 on learning of it, after two and a half years on the committee without being told. And a building condition report recommended urgent work on water damage to the basement car park in 2019. After a City of Melbourne building notice in February 2025, repairs finally began in August this year.

What a regulator can and can't do

Victoria is not standing still. An independent review of the Owners Corporations Act earlier this year proposed a dedicated unit within Consumer Affairs Victoria, which the government says it is open to, subject to funding. Laws passed this month make it easier for owners to vote to take legal proceedings, and owners corporation managers will have to complete annual professional development from next year. Australian Apartment Advocacy is calling for a strata commissioner along New South Wales lines.

Each of those may help. But the Carlton case makes a harder point. Victoria has a regulator, a specialist tribunal and registered managers, and an owner who arrived with the paperwork still ended up running his own case. Enforcement is a backstop. The first line of defence is owners who read what they are sent and ask about what they don't understand.

The South Australian position

South Australia has no strata commissioner, no ombudsman, no dedicated tribunal and no government agency overseeing how schemes are managed. An owner who believes their corporation has acted unlawfully, oppressively or unreasonably applies to the Magistrates Court. Our guide to resolving disputes sets out how that works.

The legislation does set standards on conflicts of interest. Under the Community Titles Act 1996, a committee member with a pecuniary interest in a matter must disclose it and stay out of the decision. Under the Strata Titles Act 1988, a person with a pecuniary interest in a matter at a general meeting must disclose it before the vote. Committee members in both regimes owe duties of good faith and care, and can carry personal liability when the corporation commits an offence. Our guides to strata management committees and community title committees cover these in detail.

Standards on paper are enforced when someone notices a breach and acts on it. In South Australia, with no regulator in the picture, that someone is almost always an owner.

What to look for in your own papers

None of this calls for suspicion of your committee. Most committee members are volunteers doing unpaid work for their neighbours. It calls for the habits that make problems visible early, which protect good committees as much as they expose bad ones.

• Expense lines that don't explain themselves. If the accounts show a regular payment under a general heading such as caretaking, sundries or administration, ask who was paid and under what agreement.
• Declarations in the minutes. If the committee approves contracts year after year and the minutes never record a declared interest, it is reasonable to ask whether anyone has one.
• Commitments that outlast the committee. An agreement binding the corporation for years should trace back to a resolution the owners voted on. Ask to see it.
• Reports that went nowhere. If a building condition report called something urgent, the minutes should show what was decided, and when.

The corporation must make its accounting records and minute books available for inspection, and the accounts are presented at every annual general meeting. Reading them is the cheapest protection an owner has.

Where the manager fits

The Carlton allegations concern the committee, with the building's manager said to have signed off on the arrangement. A manager can't stop a committee from making a bad decision, but it is usually the first party in a position to see a payment that doesn't match a resolution, and it should say so to the owners.

That is easier when the manager has nothing riding on staying on the committee's good side. Acacia Collective is Australia's first member-owned strata and community title management collective: the corporations we look after are our members, and there are no outside shareholders to answer to. Part of our job is telling owners what their money was spent on and on whose authority, including when the answer is uncomfortable.

Source: Adam Carey, "3500 complaints, not one case", The Sunday Age, 27 Sep 2026, page 1. The allegations described are the subject of a claim before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and have not been tested.