I would investigate to find out if the company that did the report is required to compensate you. What is the point of the report otherwise.
I would suggest calling DOCEP / fair trading and find out the basic ruling.. You have already done the first thing which is treat the termites.
I think the company who told you there were no active termites should be liable for something, but, as damage already existed (and they reported it) , would be expected to pay for most of it. Perhaps they are just liable to pay for treating the existing termites, since you got someone else to treat them, they may be required to reimburse you all/some of that cost at least. Otherwise, what is the purpose of such inspections ? I'm sure I heard about an operator in WA having to do some treatment on a house he reported was free of termites… Anyway, I suggest asking before you write it off.
Termite treatments start at around $500, not $2k….. Now, a 2 bed square shaped house on a simple block is going to be different than a 5 bed with adjoining rooms & architect built entertaining are and adjoining shed/workstation garage etc..
But basically, it comes down to a) prevention b) cure
A) Prevention: All that can be done is to prevent termites fro getting into places you don’t; want them to eat - house / back shed etc. Around each item that needs to be protected from termites getting in & eating them, assuming a they have a concrete floor, a barrier gets injected so that termites physically cannot climb through the brick walls into the place. This is the drilling into concrete spoken of.
B) Cure: where termites are found, you want to stope them in their tacks. Because they live in nests, there will be 1000000's more than you see, so killing the ones you see will not achieve anything at all. Places where there are active termites are baited with poison so that the termites take the poison in pieces of wood back to the nest & feed their buddies and die.
Bait stations are a way of treating current active termites, or as a way of finding more so they can be killed before they do more damage to the property. Basically, they are extra bells & whistles, one pest controller might use bait stations, one might use something else…. A bait station on it’s own is not a treatment, a treatment without bait is not necessaily less of a treatment