It says quite clearly in the original post that the plumbing issue was the responsibility of “the strata” which I’m taking to mean the owners corporation.
The OC “owned” the problem and they damaged the carpet in fixing it. It’s absolutely clear to me that the OC has a responsibility here, however ridiculous it may seem for them to be replacing a carpet well past its use-by date.
A responsible strata committee should be offering a compromise of some sort and while that may not run to a whole new carpet, that’s what they could be facing if the lot owner decided to play hard ball.
There is no way an individual owner should have to pay for the consequences of the owners corp having to fix a problem in common property.
And, yes, the committee can make that decision. A special resolution is not required so neither is an EGM.
By the way, the section of the “Who’s responsible?” document that used to say all the stuff about the OC being responsible for the repairs to lot property that was damaged when they were repairing something else has been quietly removed. It was an anomaly anyway.