IDS,
As I understand it, Standards Australia came up with the brilliant idea to sell the rights to print and sell all Australian Standards documents to SAI Global for (I think) a period of 20 years.
So SAI Global has paid for these rights. Something in the order of $250,000,000 as I understand it. This was then invested (less some significant bonuses paid to those brilliant people who organised the financial windfall for Standards Australia!). Standards Australia were then supposed to use the proceeds of this "sale"/contract, plus the interest/dividends from investing it, to fund its operations for the term of the contract, 20 years.
It is apparently down to closer to $150,000,000 now and is not sufficient to fund continuing operations like writing new standards to control every aspect of our lives like they have over the last few years (to increase their market and make themselves more valuable) and to pay their bloated burocracy.
Whether or not the above had happened, everyone on committees has been doing it for free since 1932 or whenever Standards began to be developed in Australia, supposedly because of their altruistic nature. The only difference is that, Previously Standards Australia made the money from each sale of a printed document, whereas now it has been paid upfront for the sales for the next 20 years.
So it is not SAI Global's fault as such. Standards Australia got themselves into the mess all by themselves. It is their rights contract and management of the money from the sale of this rights contract that has caused the problem.
They should be thrown into jail with the USA merchant bankers. They have basically made the same mistakes and ripped off us, the end user/taxpayer.
The only solution would appear to be a government bailout or an industry by industry bailout by each industry funding its own standard development, the sales rights to which still belong to SAL Global for 20 years, because legally, Standards Australia is currently the only body allowed to produce Standards Documents and they must be sold through SAI Global because they have already paid for the right to sell them!
So presumeably, we as an industry have to fund the development of the next AS3600 (committee members have been doing it for years, now everyone has to) and then pay for a copy of the final document as well or SAI Global might sue and consequently shut down Standards Australia for breach of contract. And that might be the best solution in the end!
