Just because maintenance plans are only mandatory for large schemes in Victoria doesn’t mean smaller schemes can’t have them.
Propose to your strata committee that the building employs a surveyor to establish and prioritise future maintenance work, then you can budget accordingly.
Then propose a by-law that only licensed and certifted tradespeople be used for any work done.
Obviously you are going to get some resistance from the person who wants to avoid repairs and then do them on the cheap but if you can persuade enough other owners and /or committee members that this is a false economy – the value of your property is deteriorating – then you should be able to out-vote them.
The opinion of a couple of local real estate agents about how much poor maintenance is costing the owners in dimished vale would help.
Having said that, arguments about re-sale value will cut no mustard with owners who are not planning to sell any time soon (like, I guess, your “head honcho”) in which case you may have to get political and either out-vote them or vote them out.