SCA is MIA - 7 Reasons Why SCA in its Current Form Deserves to Fail

In the wake of the Steadfast insurance brokerage scandal, the national peak body for strata management, SCA (Strata Community Association Australasia) has been MIA (missing in action). 

Full disclosure, I’m not a fan of some former SCA leaders and senior managers at both state and national levels. I know the feeling is mutual. That said, there are many good directors, staff, and rank and file members within the SCA federation for whom I would die in a ditch. I have fond regard for and will forever be grateful to many of the pioneers of the industry, both living and passed, that have served SCA and its predecessor organisations. They have provided me with an abundance of personal and professional opportunities and mentoring. 

Further disclosure, I fully expect by writing this article many will turn up the heat on me about my previous failings and indiscretions. To them I offer a pre-emptive message: ‘bring it on’. I own my past and have learnt valuable lessons from my mistakes which I now seek to apply for the public good, and mine as well. It appears SCA hasn’t. At least not yet. So, this is written in the spirit of truth and reconciliation for the common good and in the hope that it will serve that purpose.

1. The silence of SCA senior leaders and management is deafening 

Several former office bearers, board members, and ordinary members of SCA are plagued by the Steadfast insurance brokerage scandal and related troubles. Their greed and reckless regard for their membership is reprehensible. They have gone to ground. The entity itself, SCA, is yet to name and denounce their behaviour. 

2. There is a vacuum of leadership within SCA which is dangerous

After the breaking of the scandal more than six months ago, SCA has created and maintained a leadership vacuum. There has been virtually nothing in response to the allegations from the senior management team, and certainly nothing of value to members. SCA statements about new disclosure standards have been sycophantic, made with indecent haste, and reek of self-interest. Vacua are often filled by organisations with disingenuous, or self-interested, motives. This is already happening.  

3. The SCA NSW Professional Standards Scheme is discredited 

In pursuit of professionalism, SCA NSW registered a Professional Standards Scheme (PSS) facilitated by the Professional Standards Council (PSC). These schemes are expensive to create and administer. They impose considerable financial and operating obligations on members. The quid pro quo for members is that their civil liability for negligence is capped. Accordingly, PSSs are favoured by high-risk professions like lawyers, accountants, and valuers. Query therefore, why a profession with minimal professional negligence claims would bother, other than looking for a ‘quick fix’ way of claiming professionalisation. 

The three objectives of the PSC are to improve consumer protection, professional standards, and professionalism. In the wake of the Steadfast insurance brokerage scandal, the PSC must be regretting what they took on. But again, the PSC’s silence is deafening. The SCA NSW scheme has been discredited, to say the least. The PSC must seek an overhaul of SCA NSW and the scheme or deregister it. If either of these things are in fact underway, then in the interests of transparency so highly valued by the PSC, the members of SCA NSW that must comply with this scheme, and the public, deserve to be informed.  

4. SCA has always had an identity crisis

Impossibly, by its various constitutions, SCA seeks to serve no less than three groups: strata managers, strata suppliers, and strata owners. The organisation was born of a split over whether the entity should admit suppliers. The decision to do so means that in truth SCA is, and always has been, a trade association.  The desire to seek to represent the interests of strata owners came later and was influenced by the international conglomerate of strata / condo managers, Community Associations Institute. That too is a trade association, as they are so often reminded by the doyen of strata academics, Professor Evan Mackenzie. The conflicts this present are obvious, to wit the unfair SCA standard management agreement. 

5. There is no clearly defined higher purpose served by SCA

Professional bodies, as opposed to trade associations, must serve a higher purpose. Lawyers serve the court. Medicos serve the preservation of life. Clerics serve their Gods. SCA over the years has done much for the public good, it’s just not its primary focus, which is something required of the professions. The constitutional objectives of the SCA federation are primarily self-centred. For example, SCA NSW has 14 primary and secondary constitutional objectives and only one relates to serving the public interest. SCA Vic has 10 but only one for the public good. 

6. SCA is the puppet of its sponsors 

For the longest time, if you have not been prepared to kick the can for many thousands of dollars, in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars, you are dead to SCA. This has resulted in two major organisational flaws. First, in the absence of a rigorous and enforced conflict management policy for sponsorship, SCA has excluded many good thinkers and speakers with different perspectives and experiences to offer members. Second, culturally there has developed within SCA a preoccupation with sponsor funded partying masquerading as ‘networking’. Under media and public scrutiny, big boats, fast cars, and lavish sponsor paid and subsidised trips to Hamilton Island are not a good look.  

7. The national body has a feeble grip on its federation 

SCA is not a single entity but a federation of state bodies with different agenda. This has always been a problem. It might now be its Achilles heel. There are mumblings in at least two states of secession. Without a cohesive national approach professionalisation will not occur. 

The good news for SCA is this: success teaches us nothing. The question remains: what will SCA learn from these failings? 

PS. Lest I be accused of being unconstructive in my criticism, the next article sets out the pathway to professionalisation, and I’m up to help those that choose this path.

‍