What a night, and what a history ARAMA has had over the last three decades!
On May 20, more than 250 people gathered at The Glasshouse inside The Island hotel at Surfers Paradise to celebrate our association’s 30th birthday, and to honour all those who dug the well so that everyone in the industry could drink from it.
It was May 20, 1992, when QRAMA – the Queensland Resident Accommodation Managers Association – was inaugurated on the Gold Coast. The association later became ARAMA, when the name “Queensland” was supplanted with “Australian” in line with our growth to other states and overseas.
Our 30th birthday dinner was not just a celebration of the three decades spent building an industry and business model that is probably unmatched anywhere in the world, but it was also a chance to honour some of those who have been foundation stones for a business that generates $55 billion for the Australian economy.
So it was that Mike O’Farrell, a genuine down to earth Aussie character who has done so much for the Management and Letting Rights business in this country, was presented with Life Membership of ARAMA.
Another life member Barry Turner presented Mike with the award. Barry told the big audience that with many MLR owners having their life savings invested in the industry it was men such as Mike who had helped develop the business framework to make their investments pay off handsomely.
Induction as a Life Member is regarded as ARAMA’s highest level of recognition, and it is awarded to individuals who have a lengthy and distinguished period of dedicated service, and outstanding overall contribution to ARAMA and its members.
Mike joins Barry, Kim Cox, John Punch, John Gardner, John Anderson, John Mahoney, Chris Stolk, Peter McCall, Rusty Lush, Eric Van Meurs, Del Linkhorn (dec), Maria Duke (dec), Graeme Beattie (dec), and Dave Ruxton (dec) as the only people to have received the honour.
“The MLR industry has been wonderful for my family,” Mike said, and this industry is all about families.
“When I started it was all about mums and dads – and the kids, too. The kids helped move luggage and they helped little old ladies down the steps, all that sort of thing.
“Our industry continues to be attacked by those who don’t believe in our model, but the model works. It really does.
“ARAMA Members are the lifeblood for Management and Letting Rights. I’ve supported the industry for 30 years and I’ll continue to support it for the rest of my days.”
Mike joined the Management and Letting Rights industry in 1991, and has property interests in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
He established his company MLR Services in Brisbane to provide mediation services after seeing disputes between residents, contractors and body corporates escalate into financially disastrous situations.
MLR also provides training for resident managers, caretaking service providers and body corporates.
“The industry survives because of people like Mike,” Barry Turner told the audience at The Island.
“Most of us have our life savings invested in our business and it means everything to us. Mike has been at the forefront of the fight to keep our industry strong.”
The night also saw current ARAMA president Guy Elliott paying tribute to all the past presidents from the last 30 years, and while it was duly noted that they were all men, we also acknowledged the incredible work being done in the industry by women such as Karen Nelson, who won a Top Award last year for mixed letting at the Lanai Apartments in Mackay.
And we were also graced on the night by the brilliant Kelley Rigby, a young mother of two and step-mother of three, who somehow finds time to run three businesses within the MLR realm.
Kelley, our Gold Coast branch president, was superb as our MC for the birthday dinner, introducing among others John-Paul Langbroek and Ray Stevens, the state members for Surfers Paradise and Mermaid Beach. Between them, those state members have more strata letting properties in their electorates than anywhere else in the country.
Both parliamentarians acknowledged the enormous contribution ARAMA has made to tourism and the Queensland economy, as well as the vital role in making the Gold Coast such a wonderful place to visit.
I also would like to give a big thank you to ARAMA’s Alice Houston, our Membership Services Officer, who did such a great job organising what was a truly memorable and thoroughly enjoyable event.
One of the night’s highlights saw life member John Punch explaining how the Gold Coast tourism operators and service providers initiated the system of Management Rights in its strata titled apartment buildings, which was quite fitting because, as Bernard Salt, the renowned demographer, pointed out, the Gold Coast has the highest per capita number of self-employed entrepreneurial people in Australia.
John gave young Frank Higginson a job in his legal firm 30 years ago, and Frank, now a successful lawyer himself, told the audience at The Island that he was amazed by his boss’s work ethic.
“When you look at the effort required to start something as big as the Management and Letting Rights industry from scratch, it is just extraordinary,” Frank said.
“And I now know what comes with the pressures of running your own business, looking after the needs of your clients, and looking after your family. All at the same time John was trying to create something to protect an industry that is so important to so many. It was a humongous effort.”
John was a founder of the legal firm Short Punch & Greatorix. He said QRAMA, and then ARAMA, grew out of the mushrooming development of strata titled apartments, produced for resort style use in the 1970s, with absentee and live-in unit owners having the need for both in-house management of the land and buildings plus the letting of their apartments.
“Previously, systems were tried for the leaseback of apartments to public companies, managing the building for its owner shareholders, and they failed to satisfy that need,” John said.
“The giving of responsibility to the contracted, onsite business manager, working in conjunction with body corporate managers and committees, succeeded.
“This formula for Management Rights was matched by Queensland’s unique laws, the Building Units and Group Titles Act, operating since 1965, plus the real estate agents’ laws giving a restricted licensing for letting of units to onsite building managers. This all gave rise to the rights being granted, utilised and traded by people who bought the manger’s lot, and the industry prospered.”
John said there were particular people who stood out as wanting security for the industry in the early days.
“Dave Allen, who first came to the Gold Coast as a former Australian army lieutenant colonel, consulted with me to investigate the industry and to buy his first management rights in the early 1970s,” he said.
“In the area of body corporate management, Howard Stewart moved from being an assistant to a Minister in the Queensland government to joining accountant Allen George, Peter’s father, in the running of a body corporate management company.
“Both of these people were active over the years in calling on the Queensland government to have stronger more reliable laws, and out of this came the Green Paper issued by the Goss Labour government in the early 1990s.
“The other person, who then stepped up for managers to form QRAMA with a group of other managers, was John Gardner. He had successfully run many buildings as a management rights operator on the Gold Coast and had experienced people with both good and bad intentions. John was a very colourful businessman and never one to abandon a tough situation.
“John had us form the company known as the Queensland Resident Accommodation Managers Association, QRAMA, to become the representative of the industry. Today this organisation is now Australia wide and known as ARAMA.”
John said as an industry group, ARAMA had a constant and necessary role to responsibly, and in an alert manner, keep the industry strong and represented.
“Without continued vigilance and representation in government circles, plus the education of the public and resident managers, the industry will have trouble surviving,” he said.
“As a life member of ARAMA, I am very proud to have served its needs and to see that ARAMA has such an important role to continue with, on its 30th birthday. “
ARAMA members, the political leaders in attendance and the many friends of the management rights industry have lots In common and we joined together in fine style in Surfers Paradise at ARAMA`s 30th Anniversary Celebration Dinner to celebrate, reminisce and to focus on the future.
See you In 20 years time for our 50th Anniversary Celebration Dinner !