Dubious deals and dodgy payments

I am on my committee (NSW)  and am trying to stamp out some questionable practices relating to spending and management of tradies but facing a lot of resistance. A perfect example is our major contractor (gardener) recently being asked to do an extra job. He came back with a verbal ballpark figure of $5k to $7.5k.
Apparently, ”he isn’t good with paperwork” so he didn’t quote and no other quotes were sought as we have been told “we can trust him to do the right thing”.
In addition, the person managing this tradesperson is a former committee member who recently resigned from the committee but wanted to stay on to deal with a few select contractors including the gardener. It is also obvious that the gardener is being told the jobs are his before providing a price so there is no motivation for him to provide anything competitive.
I know its hard to find tradies and am happy to keep using this gardener but giving him this level of comfort really bothers me. This is a recurring issue.

What I want to try to get across to the committee is the following: I do not believe that anyone who is not a current, validly elected committee member should be having anything to do with paid contractors. I also don’t think the committee can legally give authority for anybody to work on common property without a clear scope of works or clear quote (surely there would be insurance and other issues with this).

However, without very specific evidence in legislation that says these practises are wrong I am being told I am pedantic and difficult, and need to show flexibility.

On top of all this, while trawling through invoices on our strata portal, I have realised that the above former committee member had been (while an SC member) submitting a number of reimbursement claims for small items such as gift vouchers for tradespeople ($100 each) which I was not aware of, and as I am a committee member that means these items were unauthorised.

I also think gift vouchers are an illegal spend of strata money anyway. What is a reasonable rule here? I am going to have to raise all these issues at our next meeting and this guy has friends that will defend him.

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