I am surprised this seems so hard in NSW. The ACT has section 31 of our act which explicitly empowers the OC to bill a resident for expenses it has incurred, including a reasonable legal expense reasonably incurred, while carrying out its functions, including maintenance or anything else it is authorised by the act to do, if the expense was caused by a wilful or negligent act or omission or a breach of its rules by an owner or an occupier of a unit. The amount spent by the OC is recoverable by the owners corporation from the owner as a debt.
So, here in the ACT, for the example given, if reasonable notice and other proper procedures were followed in order to gain access to a unit for a required safety inspection and the owner then did not allow that access and that required rebooking of an inspector at a further cost, then I would say an ACT OC would be on solid ground to just bill the owner for that extra expense caused by the owner unless the owner had some reasonable excuse such as sudden illness that meant it was not a wilful or negligent act or omission. If it were challenged, I’d expect the OC would succeed at the Tribunal.
Does NSW not have something similar? Usually the NSW seems more comprehensive in covering such things.