[LINK] Make Australian Standards Open Access?

[Glen Turner]

Tom Worthington wrote:

> If the Australian Government is willing to consider making its documents 
> freely available on-line, it seems reasonable that Standards Australia 
> should do likewise.

More than reasonable. Many government regulations refer to
Australian Standards. It's a basic principle of democracy
that there are no secret laws. The cost of Australian
Standards is so high for the common person that the law in
many technical arenas is secret.

It's not as if these technical arenas are irrelevant to
the common person -- they may wish to build their own
house (or check upon the work of their builder), install
their own swimming pool, etc.


Personally, I view the move of the telecommunications
cabling standard from Standards Australia to ACIF as
a wonderful thing, as the ACIF standards are freely
available to all.

Even though I don't encourage unlicensed cabling,
having unlicensed cabling done safely is a social
plus --- I've seen enough DIY cabling running alongside
power cables for this lifetime. Also having the standard
available allows unlicensed people to readily check the
safety of work done by licensed installers. In an
industry with a small but annoying "fly by night" element
that is an important consumer protection.

I can't see why the Electrical Wiring Rules should not be
as freely available.


Finally, the split of Standards Australia into SA and
SAI Global is nothing more that a case of socialising
the costs and privatising the profits.

When that split occurred the government should have
ended its arrangement with Standards Australia and
created its own standards-coordinating secretariat.