This is patently false
> this leads to urban decay and property abandonment on a massive scale
Australia does not have property abandonment nor urban decay on a massive scale. Go to Detroit to witness such things.
[ http://blog.id.com.au/2012/australian-census-2011/the-where-... ]
And there is certainly urban decay all over the city I live in (Perth).
Also, building codes are local government, aren't they? So it depends on what council you are in. And I've certainly heard some bad stories.
Huge real estate boom fizzled at the end of '09 / early 2010.
DANGER WILL ROBINSON! A property boom has wrecked several countries. Australia could be hit by that.
2. New buildings are unoccupied, sometimes for months.
A more useful measure is rental vacancy rates. The Australian average is 2.3%, which is pretty close to "none" in practical terms.
According to the following Melbourne has a 5.9% vacancy rate. They use water usage data from the water companies for their analysis. (<50L/day = vacant property)
http://www.earthsharing.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Philip_Soo...
REIV vacancy rate is (unleased property on the books) / (property on the books). It's always going to be an under-estimate of true vacancy due to properties that are empty full time and those that are privately managed and temporarily vacant.
> While dwellings are vacant for a number of reasons they are primarily associated with holiday areas
As someone who does live in the inner-city of Sydney and pay $3100USD/month for a shoebox. I would be incredulous if there were a large amount of vacancies beyond normal turnover.
There are usually bidding wars for property sales (most inner-city properties are sold by auction) and dozens of applications for rentals.
Suburbanization tied with ridgid regulations that make property development or improvement extremely costly lead to a downward spiral in property values, which means of obtaining loans insurance or other guarantees becomes nearly impossible, meaning even less redevelopment, more decay, and more crime, accelerating further suburbanization.
this feedback loop decimate inner cities.
I take it you haven't been to Perth lately?
Right. Hence why I said "one cause".
That's what the various bodies would like you to think, as making things black and white makes their life easier, and keeps them friendly with the various trade organisations.
I gather it is now legal for a professional electrical engineer to do their own wiring in Queensland, just they can't do it for third parties. By my reading, it is also generally okay for anyone to work on an "extra low voltage circuit", meaning less than 50Vac or 120Vdc. At the same time, the various energy authorities will claim it is illegal to install your own solar panels, and their publicity material says you can't do any wiring. The actual law seems to say you can DIY, just that you would need an electrician to connect the 240Vac side of an inverter to the main.
Workcover applies an additional layer of regulation in industrial situations. There also seems to be a requirement for an electrician to do solar work to qualify for various green rebates, despite the electricity regulations saying its okay.
http://uppercaise.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/new-law-puts-noos...
And contract electricians cost upwards of $80/hour, making replacing a light fitting prohibitively expensive.
I'm surprised that a keen DIYer hasn't tried using a 3-phase 32A plug to plug their house into the mains, and claim the entire house is an appliance.
My gut feeling is that the law doesn't really achieve much, past a level of discouragement via FUD, since it's pretty well unenforceable. Electricians are supposed to write out "compliance certificates" for any work done, but I gather an awful lot don't. Even then, unless the work impacts the external connection, the only copy of the certificate resides with the home owner. I imagine an awful lot of people file it under the sofa, or in the garbage bin. As far as I know, there is no central record of a house's wiring configuration. Practically, the only way of telling that a job wasn't done by an electrician is that the job is really bad (and dangerous), or of a standard that significantly exceeds that achieved by a typical electrician.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/22/155596305/episode-...
This essentially prevents any person that owns older property from doing any upgrades, or major repairs at all, because the massive cost of upgrading the entire house at once is completely out of reach for most people. this leads to urban decay and property abandonment on a massive scale.
with the recent push by parties such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google to have registered developer programs complete with code signing, be very wary of industry wide pushes to introduce a similar thing for programmers. The IEEE has attempted to introduce the idea for years. you can be sure that soon after introduction laws forcing accreditation for many types of positions would shortly follow, as would subsequent rises in membership fees and requirements.
Not to mention the threat of only a certified developer being able to legally write code at all. this situation already exists in many engineering disciplines. with things like secure boot and locked bootloaders and signed code, it is almost a technical triviality.
want to know how general purpose computing will be killed? it will be via initiatives such as this.