The long-awaited Owners' Corporation (OC) Amendment Bill has been introduced into parliament.

The most significant change, and one we had been advocating for, is the creation of tiers of OC relating to the size of the development.

The OC Act 2006 failed to distinguish between small and large developments, but now five tiers have been created with Tier One developments of less than 100 occupiable lots down to Tier Five a two-lot subdivision or a services-only OC.

While the roll of the developer at handover and financial governance has been addressed, disappointingly the bill still has no new remedies for the thousands of Victorian apartment owners saddled with patently unfair building management and facilities management contracts, with multi-generational tenures of 25 to 99 years.

This rort must not be allowed to continue and we call on the state government to urgently introduce constraints on every type of contract.

All contracts must be limited to a reasonable maximum number of years.

Another egregiously unfair clause that sneaked in is the "get out of jail" card for short-stay apartment owners.

All an owner needs to do to get off scot-free is to give an overnight guest a copy of the OC rules and, just like magic, the owner is not liable for any breach committed by a short-stay guest! The entire Division 1A on short-stays is a travesty that strips residents of reasonable rights.

Lord Mayor plans community forum We Live Here met with Lord Mayor Sally Capp recently to discuss two of the most pressing issues affecting apartment residents – cladding and short-term rentals.

On the combustible cladding issue, we had the opportunity to talk about the inconsistent information emanating from council, the Victorian Building Authority (VBA) and various experts.

The Lord Mayor said the City of Melbourne would organise a community forum, to allow council to provide accurate and up-to-date information.

We welcome the forum proposal and we are certain it will be a very well-attended event.

We were also encouraged by the Lord Mayor's acknowledgement that there needs to be proper regulation of the short-stay industry so there is a level playing field for all.

At present, OCs have to bear the cost of increased wear and tear on their buildings caused primarily by commercial short-stay operations.

Government cladding fund will help "up to 40 buildings" In last month's column, we estimated 30 buildings could benefit from the government's belated largesse.

However, information from the Victorian Treasury has revealed that the state government plans to help fund the removal of flammable cladding on "up to 40 buildings".

The other 800-plus Victorian apartment buildings identified as having cladding that is a risk to life, will presumably not get any funding assistance at all.

The list of apartment buildings to be denied assistance includes more than 30 that are classified as posing an extreme risk to life and more than 400 classified as high-risk.

The state government's May budget figures show that it had estimated that cladding-affected buildings would need an average of $11 million each for rectification works.

On June 16, the government pledged $300 million of state funds to address the cladding issue, following the release of the Cladding Taskforce June report.

Of that $300 million, just over $165 million was officially earmarked in the May budget for state government-owned buildings such as hospitals and schools.

This leaves less than $135 million to help at-risk apartment buildings.

Premier Andrews' request for another $300 million from the Commonwealth was immediately rejected both by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews.

To make up the shortfall, the state government announced an increase in a levy on building permits for projects with works over $800,000.

If the government hopes to raise about $2000 extra per average apartment lot, it could take a very long time to raise $300 million.

Let's work it out: A new apartment project with 100 lots might raise $200,000 in additional levies - so Victoria will need 150 new such projects approved, starting now, for the requisite funds to roll in.

According to building figures available at City of Melbourne's open data platform, around 25 such projects will be completed in 2019.

Even at that rate, which has been abating, it would take up to six years to raise the cash needed.

When or if the additional money is raised, the fund is supposed to total around $435 million.

Based on Treasury estimates, that's enough to help only about 40 buildings of the 1069 identified as having dangerous cladding.

About 32 extreme-risk buildings, 409 high-risk buildings and 388 moderate-risk buildings will not receive any assistance.

Using the Treasury budget estimates as a basis, the cost of fixing all 1069 affected apartment buildings could exceed $12 billion.

Whether the government eventually contributes $400 million, which seems exceedingly unlikely, the contribution will be less than 5 per cent of what it will cost Victorians living in dangerously clad buildings.

While Melbourne burns … In June, Daniel Andrews was reported as wanting a "national partnership" on combustible cladding and for the issue be "put on the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agenda" at its August meeting in Cairns.

While a "national partnership" seemed to be a euphemism for mendicity - to beg alms from Canberra – our interest was piqued by the prospect of having all the Premiers confer on the cladding issue at the 47th COAG meeting.

How did it work out? Well, COAG's tropical August meeting came and went and the cladding issue was not a hot topic.

Cladding does not appear to have been a COAG topic at all, not rating a mention in the official "Communiqué", the quaintly aggrandised moniker of the post-COAG media release.

It is disappointing because the COAG meeting was claimed to be about "improving the lives of all Australians" - apparently with the exception of those living in dangerously-clad apartments.

Did Premier Andrews simply forget to raise the combustible cladding issue at the Cairns conflab? A subequatorial clime and its attendant refreshments could be distracting but surely our Premier's minders could have remembered to slot in the cladding issue, ad hoc, under "business arising".

What's happening while Melbourne burns? Is Nero fiddling? HEALTH

Premier Daniel Andrews' cladding fund might be able to help a tiny percentage of apartment buildings with dangerous cladding.

The small print in the recent Victorian Building Authority (VBA) report explained that more than half the headline-grabbing $300 million fund would be earmarked to fix the cladding on the government's own buildings.

Less than $150 million will be left over for ordinary folk living in combustible apartments.

At an average remediation cost of $5 million per building, the fund is just enough to take care of the cladding on perhaps 30 buildings.

That's about three per cent of the 1069 buildings that the Victorian Cladding Taskforce deemed a "risk to life".

This cladding fund seems to be scant propitiation for the government's significant role in this whole scandal – having overseen the disastrous "self-regulation" regime.

And three per cent is long way short of "half" the fire-risk buildings that the state government said it would help.

Meanwhile, another cladding fire in Canberra this month, ignited by a discarded cigarette on a balcony, has once more highlighted the issue.

And Minister for Planning Richard Wynne made the headlines in a case being prosecuted against a building surveyor who signed off on dangerous cladding for several buildings.

Please remember that the state government was the architect and, for decades, the arbiter and enforcer of the disastrous building self-regulation regime.

This was a system that sanctioned the wholesale approval of substandard and dangerous works by government-accredited, private building surveyors.

As a major beneficiary of the runaway building boom, the government's role in the genesis of today's cladding calamity is both intimate and comprehensive.

The state's desultory oversight of a cavalier and corrupt industry over so many years is an unmitigated failure of duty of care that cannot be extenuated with a monthly, hyperbolic sound-bite from Spring St.

We expect much more from our government than empty funding promises and animated blame-shifting.

Mr Andrews and Mr Wynne, how about forgoing the false magnanimity and confected indignation? Just accept responsibility for the mess and do something concrete.

Sadly, so many state governments around Australia are guilty of the same monumentally incompetent supervision of building standards.

Again, we urge the federal government to call a Royal Commission into the building industry and the appalling multi-billion-dollar legacy that ordinary Australians are now paying for.

OC Act reforms fall short We are very concerned about loopholes in the state government's exposure draft of the proposed reformed Owners Corporation Act.

We Live Here has been campaigning for years against blatantly unfair building and facilities management contracts.

Many unconscionable contracts have opaque costs, embedded commissions and irrevocable terms of many decades.

The Financial Review reported this month a case of a 99-year embedded network contract! This type of inequity needs to be eliminated.

The government has drafted a clause in the proposed draft legislation to prevent onerous long-term contracts that "benefit the applicant for registration of the plan of subdivision", i.e.

the developer.

The huge loophole here is that the developer can offer a benevolent gift of a lucrative multi-generational contract to a "mate" who happens to be in effective control of an unrelated company or entity.

Different company, different directors – too easy.

This ruse would still be possible despite the draft reforms.

Legally, or ostensibly, the developer does not benefit - a fairy tale that we lack the credulity to swallow, despite the legislators' disposition.

Many of the unfair contract examples we are being sent by disaffected owners corporations show that the developers and contracted companies are well known to each other but legally unrelated.

The reform required is simple: just limit the term of all third-party owners' corporation (OC) contracts to three years, renewable at the OC's option - regardless of who benefits.

Otherwise the proposed reform will be just ludicrously simple to rort.

This legislation needs to allow owners to seek a ruling from Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) on fairness and equity principles for all existing contracts of more than three years, not just new contracts signed since 2017.

Many of these unfair "mates" deals for 25, 30 and 99 years obviously still have many years or decades to run.

Developers and building managers have been prodigiously ingenious in forging new constraints to create generational, iron-clad contracts, such as: procedural restrictions imposed on the revocation of an appointment; contractors renewing the appointment at their option; automatic renewal of the contract of appointment if the OC fails to give notice of its intention not to renew; and restricting the ability of an OC to refuse consent to the assignment of a contract.

To see the We Live Here submission to the Consumer Affairs Victoria OC Act review, search online for "Owners Corporations and Other Acts Amendment Bill – Exposure Draft consultation".

We Live Here believes these contract inequity issues must be addressed as a matter of urgency before the final version of the Bill is released.

As we sifted through the exposure draft of the Owners Corporations and Other Acts Amendments Bill released by Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) we found quite a few issues.

We Live Here has submitted a response to CAV.

In it we have detailed substantial deficiencies in the Bill that need to be resolved.

Tiers of owners corporations' – excluded clauses The new legislation will allow for different regulatory requirements based on the number of occupiable lots.

We Live Here has campaigned for this since the review of the legislation commenced in 2016 so at first we were very pleased.

But we do have issues is in the way it is being implemented.

Put simply: there will be four tiers: two lots, three to nine lots, 10 to 50 lots and over 50 lots.

In other jurisdictions internationally, the tiers have dedicated legislation – a far superior approach.

This Bill has a cumbersome, prose-expressed list of exclusions that will confuse the average citizen and delight the legal profession with its complexity.

"Mates" contract reforms must also apply to building managers and must be retrospective.

One long-overdue reform is to prohibit onerous and unfair terms in owners' corporation (OC) management contracts and gives more power to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) to rule generally whether other terms in OC management contracts are unfair.

Some terms slated to be banned are those that: Impose procedural restrictions on the revocation of the manager's appointment; Enable the manager to renew the contract of appointment at their option; Provide for the automatic renewal of the contract of appointment if the OC fails to give notice of its intention not to renew the contract, and Must not restrict the ability of an OC to refuse consent to the assignment of the contract of appointment to a person appointed as the manager, other than one which provides that such consent, must not be unreasonably withheld.

These proposed reforms in the Bill only apply to OC manager contracts.

Unfair contracts for building management are not addressed! Tens of thousands of Victorians need relief from blatantly immoral building manager contracts with obscene, irrevocable terms of up to 25 years.

We Live Here will be lobbying to ensure that sensible prohibitions on contracts will also apply to building manager and facilities manager contracts and will be retrospective.

Damage caused by short stays must be addressed Neither this OC reform Bill nor the so-called Airbnb Bill already enacted, protect high-rise owners and occupiers from a range of property damage issues.

A high-profile case in Docklands right now started with a short-stay party booking and led to calamitous damage to at least five floors.

A large party was held in a luxury penthouse with a sauna being used for an extended period, ultimately causing the fire sprinklers to flood the party apartment and several floors below.

Now, if there are two more floods caused by the same short-stay apartment within two years, the reformed Bill will entitle the hapless residents who have been flooded to the grand sum of $2000.

And who pays? The Bill says the "short-stay provider".

Moreover, the affected occupier would have to take action "within 60 days of the breach" but the occupier will not be entitled to a single cent unless the identical breach happens three times in two years.

This means that there must be three identical incidents in 60 days for an affected occupier to qualify for a paltry $2000 in damages.

The whole philosophy is upside-down.

There is no prevention strategy, it is all about forcing disaffected parties to take arduous legal action for the slim prospect of a tiny sum of money.

Another "Bazinga" clause gives short-stay operators a get-out-of-jail-free card.

All a short-stay business operator needs to do is provide the invited guests with a copy of the OC rules – and just like magic – no more liability! Everything becomes the guest's fault.

Then anyone affected only has the option to chase the tourist who just flew back to the other side of the world! How did these deficiencies arise? A lot of legislative "experts" have invested countless hours drafting this Bill – so how did it get to this stage with these deficiencies? We believe the initial consultation period in 2015 to 2016 was flawed.

Who was consulted? Developers? Strata managers? Airbnb? One thing is certain: representatives of owners and residents were not consulted properly.

What's next with the draft Bill? We have submitted our concerns to the CAV in the interest of all Victorians living in strata developments.

The Bill is expected to be introduced into Parliament later this year, subject to satisfactory resolution of issues raised during this latest consultation period.

Retirement of Shane Scanlan We Live Here would like to say a big thank you to editor Shane Scanlan for providing a voice for owners and residents living in high-rise communities, through our monthly columns in the three local newspapers which commenced from the time we launched almost three-and-a-half years ago  All the very best Shane, we hope there are lots of exciting, new adventures ahead.

The state government is under increasing pressure to amend the outdated Owners Corporation Act 2006. Its long-awaited review of the Act is now more than a year overdue, based on its own promises. 

The government's self-imposed target date to release an "exposure draft" is now June this year. We Live Here hopes that the draft is released soon because the issues that the Act fails to address are critical. 

A spokesperson for Consumer Affairs Minister Marlene Kairouz said: "We're committed to working with the public to ensure the views of stakeholders and the community are carefully considered." 

If only this had been the case for the past two or three years. 

Up until now, the government has been consulting in private and only with commercial groups – businesses that make money from strata residents and owners. How about the forgotten stakeholders – the residents and owners? 

It's time we had a voice. 

We Live Here will be representing the interests of residents and owners and we hope to have a big impact on the reformation of the outdated legislation that, to a large extent, governs our lives. We have several recommendations: Reflect today's landscape. The current Act is a "one size fits all" piece of legislation that fails to distinguish between 50-storey skyscrapers and suburban blocks with two units for example. 

The legislation needs to be far more nuanced; Control proxy-farming. Many owner-occupiers are simply overruled by commercial interests who corruptly exploit proxies to rip off owners. 

The unethical practice of developers colluding with strata managers to lock in long-term contracts must be stopped. The government should also introduce retrospective clauses that restore justice to owners who have been lumbered with 25-year management contracts disgracefully awarded to mates of the builder on the eve of settlement. 

Make a level playing field. 

Short-stay operators are being protected by the Residential Tenancies Act [1997] even though some of them are multi-million-dollar businesses. Multi-tiered lot liability. Short-stay operators also increase maintenance costs for all owners. 

Expert opinions of quantity surveyors and engineers in documents tabled in the NSW Parliament provide evidence that short-stays push up costs significantly. There is a strong argument to allow a higher levy rate for lots used for short-stays. The single-tier lot liability system simply does not work. For example, security costs will continue to rise with the increase in short-stays. Even Victoria Police has had to create a special squad to deal with out-of-control Airbnb parties. And if wild parties were not enough, the increase in home invasions and burglaries linked to Airbnb bookings has been the subject of many media reports. Restore powers. 

Justice Riorden's 2016 Supreme Court judgement took away self-determination powers of owners' corporations. These powers need to be restored. Clarify who pays for brigade attendance. Owners are being hit with massive fire brigade bills often caused by short-stay guests. VCAT has a record of ruling in favour of short-stay guests, forcing innocent owners to cough up thousands of dollars to pay for the stupidity of others. Who pays for cladding? The owners! We Live Here was invited to comment on the state government's cladding rectification agreement (CRA) – the loan scheme touted by the government as a solution to funding the costs of cladding remediation. 

We offered feedback that the government appears to have declined to take on board. The CRA scheme is onerous for owners' corporations and owners. Every owner in a building must be assessed financially for the CRA loan. If a building has one owner who is not strong financially, or an owner who does not provide financial data in time, the loan application stalls. Coupled with the special resolution required to get the loan accepted, it is difficult to see how this scheme could work. Plus, it has the potential to create an STD – a sale-transmitted debt – because, when the property is sold, the new owner would inherit the debt. 

Is Planning Minister Richard Wynne still scratching his head wondering why nobody is taking up the offer? We Live Here has been told by some buildings that a line of credit is far easier to obtain. Of course, this debate about how to get a loan ignores the real injustice in the cladding debacle – why are owners paying for the incompetence of others? 

The government had a hand in this fiasco every bit as much as the builders, architects and building surveyors. It was the government's regulatory oversight that allowed the flammable cladding to be installed.  

Our reminder: All high-rise apartment buildings must implement a fire risk management plan NOW. The plan should set out all the management steps you have implemented to make your building safe while the assessment is being carried out.