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PUBLISHER’S LETTER
www.siliconchip.com.au
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD
Production Manager
Greg Swain, B.Sc.(Hons.)
Technical Staff
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2 Silicon Chip
The Electric Wiring Debate –
have YOU sent in your
“Statement of Will”!?
The electrical wiring debate goes on. But
while most people agree with the campaign, the
number who have responded positively by sending in their signed “Statement of Will” or copy of
their “MY WILL” letter to their parliamentarians
has been pretty underwhelming. Have YOU sent
yours in? In effect, we have plenty of “Noddies”
but most seem unable to pick up a pen.
I suppose this fits in with the general picture
of Australians being apathetic but this is an issue which affects us all – all
people who want to be able to work on electrical equipment. The campaign
is really two-pronged. We’re not just campaigning that people should be
allowed to do their own home-wiring. There also should be no restrictions on
people working on mains-powered equipment.
Let’s get right down to the grass roots. For example, this issue also involves
anyone who wants to work on vintage radios – they are mains-powered aren’t
they! Not only in Queensland, but now in most other states, you can’t legally
work on your own vintage radios. Happy with that? And amateur operators?
Sorry, you can’t touch a mains-powered transceiver.
In fact, we’re talking about anyone who wants to assemble or service
mains-powered equipment, whether it is a DIY project described in SILICON
CHIP, servicemen working on TVs, VCRs, microwave ovens, photocopiers and
printers, PCs and their monitors, and so on. Yes, if you’re a tech, this law
stops YOU earning a living!
It also embraces people working in the broadcast industry working on studio equipment and transmitters, technicians servicing medical equipment in
hospitals and doctors’ surgeries and so on. Even if you have a PhD in electrical engineering, your career is over.
Presently in Queensland, all these people are working illegally if they
connect or disconnect non-live mains-voltage wiring and do not at least have
a restricted licence. And even if they have a restricted licence, they can not
legally construct or modify mains-voltage sections of any electronic equipment, nor troubleshoot such sections when they are live.
That such a situation could exist and spread to other states is utterly ludicrous.
Now don’t be apathetic. You will be stopped from doing what you presently do now, which is to work on all forms of mains-powered equipment.
Maybe you don’t care if you are never legally allowed to do your own home
wiring. But you WILL CARE if you are eventually stopped from building a
kit because it’s got a mains powered transformer and/or other mains-voltage
circuitry.
This is the situation in Queensland RIGHT NOW. If we don’t do anything, it WILL become the same right across Australia.
Actually, if you take the present law in Queensland, it probably means that
no-one can even open up their own computer to change a card or insert more
memory. After all, most PCs are mains-powered.
Furthermore, as outlined elsewhere in this issue, no electrical or electronics engineer, no matter how highly qualified or experienced, can ever get a
licence to do wiring. If he lives in NSW, and if he is a power, protection or
control engineer, he has a slight chance of being able to get one, but only after
he has been approved so he can do the prescribed TAFE
course.
So we have the situation where engineers can design
large and complex electrical installations but they can
never touch the wiring. They can’t even work on the ordinary domestic fixed wiring system in their own homes!
Now come on – let’s get REAL.
As part of getting REAL, let us acknowledge that at the
very least, home-owners should be legally able to replace
defective light switches and power points and install
light fittings. They should also be able to temporarily
unscrew light switches and power points from walls and
tape them up, so that they won’t be painted over during
re-decorating. After all, that is what a lot of people do
now and surely no one can argue that this is a significant
source of fatalities – it clearly isn’t.
But we are going even further. We are campaigning
so that home-owners can legally do any domestic wiring right up to the switch-board, just as they do in New
Zealand and most other western countries. In fact, in New
Zealand home-owners can design and construct their own
switchboard. They can also bolt it up and connect the
house wiring to it under the supervision of an electrician!
Concurrently, we are campaigning to have all the silly
restrictions on people working on all mains-powered
equipment removed.
OK, so how have electricians reacted to this campaign? On the whole, they have been utterly negative.
They generally refuse to accept the fact that most western countries: (a) permit home-owners to do mains wiring and appliance repairs; and (b) have a better safety
record than Australia’s. While denying these facts they
go on to claim that conditions in Australia are somehow
more dangerous than elsewhere.
On this last claim, the electricians MAY have a point!
Not that our 240VAC electrical system is inherently any
more dangerous than in most other countries. That is
patently untrue. Some electricians have even tried to
convince me that because we have so many migrants in
this country, the situation is more dangerous because
migrants don’t know or care about regulations and
safety and just wire things up willy-nilly. Well, that is
nonsense. Migrants are no more careless and/or lacking
in the relevant knowledge about wiring standards than
other Australians.
No, the reasons why the situation in Australia may be
more dangerous are twofold. First, inspections of domestic wiring by the electrical authorities are now practically
non-existent or cursory at best. Electricians generally
feel that this is wrong and that it lets the “cowboys” get
away with bad and unsafe practices. That’s fair comment.
Of course, as far as letting home-owners do their own
wiring, we are advocating that thorough inspection be
mandatory for new installations and extensions. We have
done that from the outset.
Second, there is no information available to the public
on how domestic electrical wiring should be done. You
can go into a hardware store and buy the cable, the
conduit, the junction boxes and other fittings but nowhere does it tell you what cable should be used, how
it should be wired and so on. This is a “chicken and
egg” situation.
Because it is illegal, no information on how to
do domestic wiring is available. Well, as soon as it
becomes legal, the information on how to do it will
become available.
In countries where it is legal for home-owners
to do their own wiring, information on how to do
it is freely available. For instance, the New Zealand government sells “code of practice” booklets to
home-owners there (NZ$5 each), to provide guidance
on various aspects of electrical wiring and appliance
repairs. So while ever it is illegal in Australia for
home-owners to do their own domestic wiring, the information on how to do it is likely to be unavailable.
Unless we change that, we will always have the
potentially dangerous situation whereby home-owners CAN LEGALLY BUY all the electrical cable and
fittings they want but never be properly informed on
how it should be used.
Properly informing the public ensures that wiring
done by home-owners will become safer. Add in the
requirement for inspections, as in New Zealand, and
the overall safety of wiring in homes must become
much safer than it is now. After all, hundreds of thousands of Australians have illegally done their own
“electrical work”, and they will continue to illegally
do it if the system does not change. So let’s replace
the electrician instigated official “voodoo” with some
REAL PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE and just make the
domestic electrical environment much safer, as most
other western countries have done!
Electricians can’t have it all their own way. If they
are really concerned about safety, then they should
be in favour of the changes we advocate. That way
everyone would be much better informed about how
safe wiring must be done.
Actually, we don’t think that electricians are all
that concerned about safety. If they were, the electricians who control the state Licensing Boards, Electrical Safety Offices, etc, would do something about the
trip current for domestic safety switches in Australia.
Overseas research shows that child fatalities occur
at currents as low as 8mA (see “Personnel Protection
Devices for Specific Applications” by the Electric
Power Research Institute, EPRI, Pleasant Hill, CA,
USA).
New Zealand research indicates that current as
low as 5mA kills very young children. In the USA,
domestic safety switches have a mandatory trip
current of no higher than 10mA. In Australia, the trip
current for domestic safety switches is 30mA. 10mA
trip current safety switches are available in Australia
Continued overleaf ...
July 2001 3
but are not mandatory. The electricians have clearly
been napping!
By the way, what about this proposition: all
homes should require an electrical wiring safety
inspection when they are sold. That way, any dodgy
wiring in older homes could be detected and fixed.
After all, any home that is more than 40 years old
probably needs a complete rewire anyway.
Why wait for injury or fatality to expose a wiring
problem?
To summarise the campaign, we are appealing
to the parliamentarians in each state to direct their
electrical licensing authority to:
(a) remove any restrictions which may prevent people
from working on mains-powered equipment, whether
it is for the purpose of service and repair, restoration
or assembly;
(b) produce legislation which is based on the New Zealand Electricity Act and Regulations, which allows
householders to do their own “electrical work”, including appliance repairs and the installation of fixed
wiring.
You can do your bit to help by signing the “Statement
of Will” in this issue and sending it to us. PLEASE DO
IT NOW!
Leo Simpson
And now it’s all up to YOU!
Send the completed forms to SILICON CHIP and we will forward them to the relevant state Ministers, along with copies of
published correspondence, editorials, etc. The Ministers will be
informed that their response, or a report that they apparently
decided not to respond, will be published in SILICON CHIP!
While in some ways similar to a petition, it must be our aim
that it is not treated as a petition. If you have access to the Internet, go to http://www.rag.org.au/rag/petqld.htm and study the
onerous requirements that must, by law, be observed in order
to produce a petition that a state parliament will accept. Then
click on Creative Petitioning at the bottom of the page to learn
how easily parliaments can disregard petitions.
Our state parliaments have refused to accept petitions that had
many tens of thousands of signatures on them, simply because
the form of the petition was not exactly correct. If you don’t have
access to the Internet, suffice to say that conventional petitions
to our state and federal parliaments are largely a waste of time.
In addition to circulating the “Statement of Will” form, write
an individual “MY WILL” letter, similar to the one below, to your
local state member of parliament and encourage others to do
the same.
Don’t forget to date the letter and provide your name and
address so the parliamentarian can confirm that you are a
constituent.
Dear Sir (or Dear Madam),
I know that it is my duty to keep you informed of MY
WILL on any matter that comes before Parliament, or that
should come before Parliament.
IT IS MY WILL that you take immediate action to end
the “closed shop” that electricians enjoy in relation to
“electrical work”, and that you promote the replacement
of current electricity related legislation with legislation
that is essentially equivalent to the New Zealand Electricity
Act and Regulation, which allows householders to do their
own “electrical work”, including appliance repairs and the
installation of fixed wiring.
Yours Faithfully,
(signed)
4 Silicon Chip
Above all, don’t enter into written argument with a politician.
Politicians are masters in the art of avoiding what they don’t want
to face up to, and become experts in manipulating words to their
own benefit.
Should your parliamentary member try to sidestep (and they are
extremely adept at doing so) taking positive political action on your
behalf (ie, they rattle on about what his/her party is or is not doing
instead of agreeing to act in accordance with your WILL), you simply
write back and state:
Dear Sir (or Dear Madam),
Further to my letter of (insert date of your original letter) and
your reply of (insert date of their inadequate or fob-off reply), and
in accordance with my lawful obligation to keep you informed of MY
WILL, I again inform you that IT IS MY WILL that you take immediate
action to end the “closed shop” that electricians enjoy in relation to
“electrical work”, and that you promote the replacement of current
electricity related legislation with legislation that is essentially equivalent to the New Zealand Electricity Act and Regulation, which allows
householders to do their own “electrical work”, including appliance
repairs and the installation of fixed wiring.
Yours faithfully,
(signed)
If you have access to the internet, go to http://www.rag.org. au/
rag/mywillet.htm and learn about the background and potential
power of the “MY WILL” letter. For each “MY WILL” letter you send
to your parliamentary member, send a copy to SILICON CHIP so we
can monitor the level of involvement in the campaign for reform.
If your local parliamentarian shows interest in the issue, provide
them with copies of relevant SILICON CHIP published correspondence
and editorials, etc, or ask them to contact SILICON CHIP directly.
Come on SILICON CHIP readers, you asked us to help you with
this one – if you don’t want more and more restrictions, get those
signatures rolling in!
This information (including a copy of the "MY WILL"
form) may also be downloaded from the SILICON CHIP
website, www.siliconchip.com.au
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