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The owners corp has an obligation to ensure apartments are accessible for fire inspections and these are conducted annually at the very least.
I don’t know about any standard notice but if it was inadequate, you could certainly challenge the charge at Fair Trading and NCAT.
To answer question 2, this usually comes in the form of them having to arrange a second or subsequent visit by fire safety inspectors, which comes at a cost, which they are passing on to owners who didn’t make their apartments accessible.
With that in mind, and given your situation, you might want to consider making arrangements for access to the apartment at times when you aren’t able to get there, such as by leaving a key with another resident, or the building manager (if you have one).
If there’s no one there that you trust, you could even send a spare key to the fire safety people. The thing is, this is going to happen every year, possibly more often than that, and you need to have a plan B for when you can’t be there.
How about asking if you can put a key safe in the electrical fuse cupboard or somewhere else with limited access?