Free Standards: Great Idea, Wrong Fix.

The government just committed $42.7 million of your money to solve a problem a not-for-profit could fix itself tomorrow for zero tax dollars.

Let me tell you about Standards Australia.

They own the documents tradies, engineers and other professionals are legally required to follow.

Wiring a house? That’s a standard. Installing solar? Standard. Building anything? Standards, standards, standards. Mandatory. Written by volunteers. Owned by a not-for-profit.

And they typically charge hundreds of dollars a pop to read them.

The 2026 Federal Budget said “enough!”. It committed $42.7 million to make mandatory standards free. Good instinct. Catastrophically wrong solution.

Because Standards Australia doesn’t need your money. They have $362 million sitting in a managed investment portfolio returning nearly 10% a year. That’s $31 million in investment income last year alone. They have 292 CBD employees costing $44.7 million a year who publish documents written by volunteers.

Their executive pay packet jumped 13% in a single year to $3.2 million.

They’re not struggling. And they just convinced the government to hand them another $10 million a year anyway.

The History In One Paragraph

In 2003, Standards Australia sold its publishing arm to SAI Global, gave them an exclusive 15-year licence to sell mandatory public documents, and walked away with a 10% royalty. SAI Global got flipped to Hong Kong private equity for $1.1 billion. Then flipped again to Intertek for $855 million. When the exclusive deal expired in 2019, they took back distribution — and kept the paywalls on the PDFs.

The ‘Free’ Access Is A Joke

Under pressure to give free access to the public, in 2023 they launched the Reader Room. Three documents per year with 24-hour access windows. Non-commercial use only. Explicitly not for professionals. Tradies, architects, engineers – the people legally required to comply – locked out.

Now the government is paying $42.7 million to expand access to professionals. God knows what hoops the pros will have to jump through to get access. If nothing changes, they’ll be read-only PDFs downloaded from a members-only website that can’t be printed, or shared, or uploaded to AI, need special desktop software to open, and is software locked to prevent cut and paste of clauses into other documents.

For years have been calling for free access to Australian Standards, such as in this 2022 petition, but the proposal in the federal budget isn’t how to do it.

PDFs. In 2026.

Standards that get amended constantly served as static files with no built-in version control, no amendment alerts and no clause linking. Professionals working off superseded documents they bought two years ago. Buildings built to outdated specs. Solar systems signed off against old wiring rules.

This Has A Name

The philosopher Ivan Illich called it counterproductivity: the moment an institution grows so focused on self-preservation that it systematically produces the opposite of its founding purpose. Schools that make people less curious. Productivity software that makes companies less productive.

Standards Australia was founded to make technical standards accessible and useful to Australians. It is now the primary reason they aren’t.

The Solution Already Exists And Costs Almost Nothing

Go look at legislation.gov.au. Every Act of Parliament. Always current. Always consolidated. Amendment history. Point-in-time viewing. Clause-level linking. Free. Forever.

That’s what standards need to be. Living web documents, not dead PDFs.

The open-source tools to build it exist. The whole platform could be running for a couple of million dollars a year.

Standards Australia’s $362 million endowment, run conservatively, generates $25 million a year. A lean 80-person organisation running a world-class open web platform costs maybe $18 million. No government grants needed. No paywalls. No tokens. No PDFs. Just mandatory public documents, free, online, always current.

Here’s What I Want

I’m not interested in politely watching ‘free standards’ get implemented badly and expensively while industry bodies put out grateful press releases.

I want Australian Standards published as open web documents, funded by Standards Australia’s own endowment, with no restrictions whatsoever on professional or commercial use. Permanently, not for four years until the grant runs out.

That means:

• Making noise publicly while the implementation details are still being negotiated, right now
• Putting direct pressure on Standards Australia’s board to justify why a $362 million fund needs taxpayer grants

If you’re an architect, engineer, builder, sparky, plumber, solar installer, or anyone else who has ever had to buy a PDF to know what the law requires of you, I want to hear from you.

If you’re a lawyer who understands how to push this harder through legal channels, I really want to hear from you.

If you’re a journalist who smells what I smell, call me.

If you’re a politician who wants to be the person who actually fixed this properly rather than papering over it with $42.7 million, this is your moment.

We have a narrow window while the implementation is live and negotiable. Let’s use it.

Phase Shift is a weekly opinion column by SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock. Subscribe to SolarQuotes’ free newsletter to get it emailed to your inbox each week along with our other home electrification coverage.