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WendyB – Did you undertake a due diligence search of the strata records before you purchased your property – the doctrine of caveat emptor? You stated in your comment that you believed that the strata scheme knew of the building faults …. therefore this should have shown up in the records somewhere e.g. written complaints from other owners etc.
From my understanding, it is not the responsibility of the strata scheme to inform all potential purchasers that the building may have maintenance issues. A record of these faults should be discoverable by the purchaser if they undertook their pre-purchase inspection of the records of the strata scheme.
If you bought your apartment in March and you only discovered the wet carpets in October then perhaps the leak began to occur after your purchase.
Regardless of the above, from your explanation it appears that the issues that you describe are maintenance issues that the strata scheme should rectify. Cracks in common property walls and water ingress from an external wall are generally the responsibility of the strata scheme to rectify.
If your strata scheme is wrongly trying to avoid responsibility for the repair then you could ask for assistance from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). VCAT helps resolve common property maintenance matters such as yours. See here:
https://www.vcat.vic.gov.au/case-types/owners-corporations
You can speak to an advisor by phone. Their contact details are here: