A body corporate that governs badly is not governing.

A body corporate can hold meetings and collect levies and still not be governing anything. Governing means the rules apply to everyone in the same way, and the decisions are written down where owners can see them. When that stops, the scheme carries on, but nobody is really in charge of it.

Say the conduct rules forbid parking in the visitors' bays overnight. One trustee's son does it every weekend and nobody says a word. Within a season, half the complex parks there, and a new trustee who tries to enforce the rule is told it has never been applied. The rule is still in the document. In practice the scheme now runs on habit.

Money shows it faster. When levy arrears are allowed to build because chasing a neighbour feels awkward, the shortfall comes out of maintenance. The painting gets postponed, the gate motor gets patched instead of replaced, and the reserve fund is slowly drawn down. Owners who do pay are now carrying the ones who do not.

So the test is simple. Pick any rule in the scheme and ask whether it would be applied to a trustee the same way it would be applied to a tenant. If the honest answer is no, the minutes describe a body that exists on paper and not much further.