Selling Thin Air and Squiggly Lines: My Satirical Take on Strata Ownership

The tables were turned on the debaters in the last session of the recent Strata Futures Roundtable. Each of us were on the team opposite the viewpoint you would expect us to hold. The topic – that owners are always right: what passes the pub test for reasonableness in strata management? I was the last speaker for the negative. With tongue firmly in cheek, this is what I argued -  

And I would add [to the arguments put by fellow members for the negative] this very fundamental point - that the very concept of strata is impossibly difficult for owners – a concept that set owners up to fail from the very beginning – one they could never get right.

• Strata is a legal concept – it was invented by lawyers – how could it ever have been right?
• The lawyers that invented this concept, our founding fathers if you like, were conflicted – they were lawyers for the developers assembled by the late great Dick Dusseldorf, the founder of Lend Lease. 
• They came to invent this concept when the developers decided there was not enough land to sell to the people, ‘so let’s sell them thin air’.
• Let’s make parcels in the sky, and we will define them by thin black lines and some thick black lines and some squiggles on a plan, and we will have the plans done by surveyors because they must be the worst communicators on the planet.
• We will sell all the air to the people, but we will keep all the important parts for ourselves so the people can never truly be in charge.
• Immediately we take their money, we will put all the people in a room and tell them they are in control, but we won’t tell them what the building’s made of, or where all the important bits are located.
• The people, as members of the body corporate, will have unlimited liability, and those that can afford to pay their contribution will have to pay the shares of those that can’t.
• And when they get it all wrong, they can go to government and ask them to make more laws that try to make bad people good, and stupid people smart. 

As to the pub test, well I was out of time, but this is what I would have said if given the chance. 

A pub is a terrible place to test the veracity of any argument – a place where people go to drink mind altering beverages to get away from life for a while. 

The pub test is where reasonable decisions go to die, and ridiculous ideas somehow get unanimous approval after the third round! 

The organisers’ idea was to spark debate. We were instructed that this was not about winning, but I’m pretty sure we did.