The high cost of Australian Standards to Australian businesses — and to the consultants that support them to be healthy and safe — has been an issue for years and needs to change. Standards are critical tools that support Australian businesses to operate legally, productively and safely.
In many cases as a result of regulation, compliance with them is not simply voluntary. Many health and safety professionals need access to standards to do their work as consultants or as managers within business, and vast sums are invested in their purchasing, as outlined in this article. The Institute has representatives on 30 Standards Committees dedicating in their time, energy and expertise on a voluntary basis to develop and improve them, and many hundreds of others provide industry expertise as well.
Given that Standards are a required tool for business, that they are important to workers health and safety, and that their development is aided by extensive voluntary input…… why are they so expensive? Standards Australia, the creator and owner of Australian standards is a not-for-profit, non-government entity. It is a well-managed organisation that carries out the highly complex task of creation and maintenance of standards through a complex range of stakeholders.
A critical element of this process was granting the newly created company SAI Global Limited an exclusive year license with an additional 5-year option to publish and distribute Australian Standards. The job of Baring Private Equity Asia is of course to maximize its profits for its private shareholders. Something is seriously wrong when Standards Australia can only refer you to SAI Global Baring Private Equity Asia to buy a copy, at their set price, when there is no competition, and the pricing framework bears no real relationship to the real cost of producing and distributing a standard.
How are costs determined? The price that SAI Global gets to charge for the cost of distributing each standard to each buyer is not based on production reality, but on an old equation which assesses what a reasonable cost might be, created in the marketplace more than 15 years ago when every recipient would receive in the mail, their own fully-bound, full-colour page standard. Considering this and reversing back to look at the cost of an individual Standard , we could estimate that:.
If the size of the market is actually smaller or larger than estimated above, it matters little — the numbers are still dismaying. The proportion of the total cost of standards going to the creator is still far too small and Australian Business is still paying far too much.
Ironically, the government plays its part in enforcing this by dint of various legislation and regulation that push companies to buy standards to demonstrate compliance. Standards can be easily viewed online in a browser window. This does not require the FileOpen plugin.
See the SAI Global instructions for details. If using your personal device follow SAI Global's download instructions. Contact Ask the Library if assistance is required.
The PDF will be locked on the device where it is first downloaded. Should you wish to access it on another device, you must download it there as well. How to search Enter the standard number e. Requesting an unlock If the library does not have access to the full-text of a standard you require, click on Request Unlock to request a purchase of the standard.
For standards from other publishers please submit a sales inquiry using the envelope icon at the bottom right of the screen: Requests go to our purchasing unit. Database of Australian Standards in legislation and case law. Can't Find a Standard You Need? Still can't find a standard?
You can request standards we do not have for purchase. Report a problem. They're not automatic legal requirements and are developed by non-government bodies such as Standards Australia , and the international body ISO International Organization for Standardization. You can search and purchase voluntary standards online. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of NSW, and their continued connection to land, water and culture. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
Text size. Mandatory standards Mandatory standards are law, and there are penalties for supplying products that don't comply with them. There are 2 types of mandatory product standards: Safety standards — requiring goods to comply with particular performance, composition, contents, methods of manufacture or processing, design, construction, finish or packaging rules.
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