Body corporate by email and e-vote: Queensland's digital rulebook

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Kooky

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A Queensland apartment building is run by its owners, and for most of the history of community titles that meant paper: a notice in the letterbox, a voting form returned by post, a visit to an office to turn the pages of a minute book. Many owners do not live in the building they own. Some live in another state, and investors may never have seen the meeting room.

The rules have moved, though less far than is often assumed. Since 1 March 2021 the regulation modules made under the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 have provided for electronic voting, for attendance at meetings by phone or video, and for email as a way of exchanging documents inside a scheme. None of it is automatic. Electronic voting has to be switched on by the owners themselves, an email address has to be the owner's address for service before a notice can go to it, and the printed voting paper has not been abolished.

This guide sets out what the digital rules are and where they stop. It is built on the Queensland Government's body corporate pages, which carry the guidance of the Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management, on the government's announcements of the 2020 regulations, and on the Electronic Transactions (Queensland) Act 2001. It does not go through what a body corporate certificate contains or how to read a scheme's records before buying: the subject here is the procedure, and what may be done on a screen.

Sources: Queensland Government media statement, 1 March 2021; Queensland Government body corporate pages, "Calling an extraordinary general meeting" (updated 30 April 2024) and "Accessing your body corporate's records" (updated 1 July 2024).

Where the digital rules come from

The Act itself is a framework. The working rules for meetings, votes, notices and records sit in regulations called regulation modules, and each scheme is governed by one of them.

The present set dates from 2020. An announcement carried by the Queensland Law Society's Proctor in October 2020 listed five regulations that were to take effect on 1 March 2021: the Body Corporate and Community Management (Standard Module) Regulation 2020, the (Accommodation Module) Regulation 2020, the (Commercial Module) Regulation 2020, the (Small Schemes Module) Regulation 2020, and an amendment regulation for the Specified Two-lot Schemes Module.

The same announcement described what the new modules were meant to do on the digital side. They were to facilitate electronic voting and attendance at meetings, including "live" electronic voting and remote personal attendance by teleconference or videoconference. They were also to facilitate the use of email and other forms of electronic communication for the exchange of information and documents within bodies corporate.

On the day the modules started, a Queensland Government media statement dated 1 March 2021 repeated the list: electronic voting including live electronic voting, attendance at meetings by teleconference or videoconference, and email and electronic exchange of documents. The Attorney-General at the time, Shannon Fentiman, was quoted in that statement: "The new regulations will make it easier for Queensland unit owners."

Two words in those announcements deserve attention. The modules "facilitate" electronic practice. They do not impose it. The Commissioner's guidance, read page by page, shows what that means: each digital step rests on a decision by the scheme or on a choice by the individual owner.

The module decides the answer

Before any question about electronic voting can be answered for a particular building, one fact is needed: which regulation module applies to it. The government's page on general meeting voting, last updated on 11 December 2025, sets out how the modules differ.

In a two-lot scheme there is no general meeting to hold online: the two owners decide by agreement. In a small scheme the body corporate chooses its own voting methods, within a test of fairness and reasonableness. The detailed electronic voting rules described in the next sections are the ones the government page sets out for general meetings, and the Standard and Accommodation modules are where most of the procedure is prescribed.

Four ways to vote, one needing a resolution

The government page lists four ways a voter may vote at a general meeting.

1. Personally. The voter attends and votes by show of hands, or hands in a completed written voting paper before the meeting starts.
2. By voting paper. A completed paper is given to the secretary by hand, by post or by fax before the meeting begins.
3. By proxy. A person appointed by the voter represents them at the meeting, subject to the proxy restrictions of the scheme's module.
4. Electronically. This fourth way exists only if the body corporate has authorised it.

The page also restates who the voters are, which matters as much on a screen as in a room. Each lot gets one vote on each motion. The voter must be an individual named on the body corporate roll as the owner, as the owner's representative, or as the nominee of a corporate owner. And a debt has consequences: if a lot owes a body corporate debt, the voter for that lot cannot vote on motions, other than a motion that needs a resolution without dissent, and cannot vote in the election of the committee.

The guidance is short and direct on that fourth way. A body corporate can decide by ordinary resolution to allow voters to vote electronically.

The decision belongs to the owners in general meeting. A committee, a body corporate manager or a software provider cannot introduce electronic voting on their own initiative, and an individual owner cannot insist on it in a scheme that has not passed the resolution. Until the motion is carried, the other three methods are the only ones available.

Once it is carried, the option travels with every later meeting notice. The government's page on calling an extraordinary general meeting, updated on 30 April 2024, says the voting papers sent with a notice should give instructions on how to vote electronically for an open or a secret ballot motion, if that option was agreed to by ordinary resolution. The same page notes that an electronic form of the voting paper may be prepared where it applies.

What the voting system must do

The regulation does not name a product or a technology, and the government page does not either. It describes two things the system must be able to do.

First, it must reject a vote from a person who is not eligible to vote, and reject a duplicate vote. That is the electronic equivalent of the checks made on paper against the roll, including the debt rule described above.

Second, it must restrict the receipt of votes to the secretary. The secretary is the person to whom a paper vote is given by hand, post or fax, and the electronic channel keeps the same destination.

Three further points on the page settle questions that owners often raise.

Secret ballots. Electronic voting is permitted for motions decided by secret ballot. The existence of a secret ballot is therefore no bar to an electronic vote, although the system's design has to respect the secrecy that the paper process protects with a separate envelope.

Timing. An electronic vote must be cast before the general meeting or, if the voting system allows, at the general meeting. This is the "live" electronic voting that the 2020 announcement referred to. Whether a scheme has it depends on the system it uses: a system that closes when the meeting opens offers pre-meeting voting only.

Changing one's mind. A voter can withdraw an electronic vote at any time before the result is declared. The page adds a limit that is easy to miss: a person's proxy cannot withdraw an owner's electronic vote. An owner who has voted electronically and then gives a proxy to someone attending the meeting has not handed over the power to undo that vote.

The page does not go into the keeping of electronic voting records or the auditing of a system, and this guide does not add to it.

Paper has not gone away

It would be natural to assume that a scheme with electronic voting stops printing. The guidance says otherwise. On the extraordinary general meeting page, hard-copy voting papers are described as required for all open motions and for secret ballots, and the electronic form is an addition where it applies.

The list of what a meeting notice must contain shows how much of the process is still described in documents. According to that page, the notice states the time and place of the meeting and includes the agenda, the proxy form and the company nominee form, a voting paper for the open motions, a secret voting paper with its envelopes for any motion to be decided by secret ballot, and any explanatory schedule or material that is required.

Electronic voting is a facility a scheme may choose; the voting paper stays in every notice. An owner who prefers to post a form loses nothing when the scheme adopts an electronic system.

Meeting notices and the address for service

A vote is only as good as the notice that preceded it. For an extraordinary general meeting, the government page states that each lot owner has to be given written notice at least 21 days before the meeting.

How the notice reaches the owner is where email comes in. The page says notice can be given to an owner personally, at their address for service, which may include an email address, or in another way if there is an agreement between the owner and the body corporate.

The wording matters. An address for service "may include" an email address, so email is a proper channel where it is part of the address for service recorded for that owner. The third route, another way by agreement, rests on an agreement with the individual owner.

For anyone buying into a scheme, the practical point is the roll. The address for service recorded for a lot determines where meeting notices go, and a new owner who leaves a previous owner's details in place, or who gives only a postal address they rarely check, will receive notices where they are not looking.

When an emailed notice is received

A 21-day period raises an obvious question once notices travel by email: from what moment is an email "given"? The body corporate pages read for this guide do not answer it. Queensland's general statute on electronic communications, the Electronic Transactions (Queensland) Act 2001, sets out default rules, and they are worth knowing in outline. The reprint read for this guide is shown as current as at 29 August 2013.

Section 11 of that Act deals with a requirement to give information in writing. Information given electronically meets the requirement on two conditions: that the information is readily accessible for later reference, judged at the time it is given, and that the person receiving it consents. The Act's definition of consent includes consent that can be inferred from conduct. Section 12 applies the same conditions where a law permits, and does not require, writing.

Sections 23 and 24 deal with time. Dispatch occurs when the communication leaves the sender's information system. Receipt occurs when the communication becomes capable of being retrieved at an electronic address the addressee has designated; if it is sent to some other address of the addressee, receipt depends on the addressee becoming aware that it has been sent there. Section 25 treats a communication as dispatched from the sender's place of business and received at the addressee's, unless the parties agree otherwise. Section 26 deals with attribution: a person is bound by a communication only if it was sent by them or with their authority.

Two cautions belong beside that summary. Schedule 1 of the Act excludes certain matters from its rules, among them documents that a law requires to be served personally or by post. And the Act supplies general defaults; it is the regulation module, read with the scheme's own records, that says how a body corporate notice is to be given. The distinction the Act draws between a designated address and any other address does, however, sit comfortably beside the idea of an address for service: the address an owner has nominated is treated differently from one the sender happens to know.

Attending a meeting from somewhere else

The second digital measure in the 2020 package was attendance. Both the announcement carried by the Proctor and the media statement of 1 March 2021 describe the modules as allowing remote personal attendance at meetings by teleconference or videoconference.

"Personal" is the word that matters. An owner who joins by video link under those provisions is attending, which is different from sending a proxy or returning a voting paper in advance. Combined with a system that accepts votes at the meeting, it is what makes a live electronic vote possible for a person who is not in the room.

Here the published guidance read for this guide is thinner than it is on voting. The government's voting page and its extraordinary general meeting page do not describe the conditions for remote attendance, and they do not say how a person attending by phone or video is treated when the quorum is counted. Those answers are in the text of the regulation module that applies to the scheme. An owner who needs them for a particular meeting should read that module, or ask the Commissioner's office, and should not assume that a practice followed in another building applies in theirs.

Records: who may ask, and how

The third area is the body corporate's records. The government page on accessing records, last updated on 1 July 2024, lists who is entitled to them: an owner of a lot in the scheme, a mortgagee of a lot, the buyer of a lot, a person who can show a proper interest in the records, and the agent of any of those people. Its example of a proper interest is a tenant who wants information about living in or using a lot. Committee members are in a separate position: the page says they have reasonable access at no cost.

The procedure is written, and it has a clock. A request is made in writing to the body corporate and the fee is paid. Within 7 days of receiving the written request and the fee, the body corporate must either allow the person to inspect the records at a reasonable time and place, or give them copies.

One sentence on the page carries most of the digital significance. A person does not have to search the records personally to obtain copies of identifiable documents. In other words there are two kinds of request. One is a search: the person, or their agent, goes through the records. The other is a request for copies of documents that can be identified, such as the minutes of a named meeting, and that request does not need a visit at all.

What the page does not do is prescribe a format. It makes no explicit mention of electronic copies or of online access to records. Nothing in it says that a body corporate must provide a portal or send files by email, and nothing in it sets a separate charge for doing so. Schemes that deliver copies electronically are working within the same rule as those that photocopy: a written request, a fee, seven days.

Two limits apply to what is handed over. A body corporate may refuse to give a document if it reasonably believes the document contains defamatory material. And a document that is a privileged communication between lawyer and client, created for legal advice or litigation and kept confidential, need not be provided.

Refusal outside those limits has a consequence. The page states that failing to give access is an offence and puts the fine at $3,454, a figure it describes as current from 1 July 2026.

The fees from 1 July 2026

The fees a body corporate may charge are prescribed, and the government's fee page, updated on 1 July 2026, gives the amounts that apply from that date. It adds that the body corporate cannot charge any other costs for giving the information, and that GST does not apply.

The records page explains how the two main fees relate. The search fee applies only to an inspection in person, and the copying fee can be charged only when copies are supplied. A request for copies of identified documents is therefore priced by the page, and an inspection by the visit.

The copying fee is expressed per page, which is a paper measure. The fee page does not set out a separate amount for a copy supplied as a file.

What each scheme still decides

Put together, the guidance describes a system with one consistent design. The regulation modules permit digital practice and leave the decision close to the people affected.

Queensland's body corporate rules allow the screen and keep the paper. What a particular building does depends on its module and on what its owners have resolved.

For a buyer or an agent looking at a lot, that makes three items worth establishing early: the regulation module the scheme is under, whether a resolution allowing electronic voting has been passed, and the address for service recorded for the lot. For an owner, the same three items explain why the notice arrived the way it did, and how the next vote can be cast.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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