History and Background

South Australia needs to comply with the new national standard for property addressing, which was first introduced in Australia in 2003.   All other states are implementing the new address.

Emergency services have complained for some time about the difficulty they have in locating some regional properties – particularly those on unnamed roads or where the only address is a Post Box number, RMB or RSD number.

The current methods of location often rely on local knowledge of particular landmarks and property locations.   This local knowledge does not apply when people are ringing a call centre for help or when an emergency service crew from another council district is called in to assist.

The electronic era requires more standard information to communicate location and address is often a required piece of information for service requests. People are more mobile these days and incidents can occur out of their previously normal local knowledge range.

The State Government in collaboration with Local Government has now started progressive implementation of Rural Property Addressing in accordance with the national standard (AS/NZ 4819:2003 updated in 2006) in South Australia.  Implementation of the standard will bring SA in line with all other Australian States and Territories and New Zealand. 

The standard will improve rural safety, delivery of services and infrastructure planning by providing certainty of location that can be communicated nationally.

The plan to implement Rural Property Addressing has been endorsed by State Cabinet.

The Department for Transport, Energy and Infrastructure (DTEI) is leading this Project with support from other State Government agencies.

Councils will be allocating the new addresses to their residents.

The District Council of Loxton-Waikerie is currently working with State Government piloting the standard.

The objective is to complete the allocation of national standard rural addresses for all occupied rural properties in time for the national Australian Bureau of Statistics Census in 2011.

Introduction of the new system will provide the following benefits:

• assist emergency services find properties and people (this could save lives and property)
• simplify addresses for consistent mail delivery
• help service providers such as vets and livestock officers to find regional properties more quickly, and
• provide a nationally recognised address.

Responsibilities

• support implementation by providing standard communications, process support and negotiation with third parties
• establish the initial rural address for the properties in each council district and provide technical support, and
• establish the rural address register, rural road register and maintenance systems.

• support the introduction of the national standard for rural addressing (AS4819:2006)
• check rural road names and office-generated addresses(state supplied) for rural community acceptance
• name all unnamed occupied rural roads and notify State Government as a priority
• communicate ‘official’ rural addresses to rural residents and state register, and
• request residents to display an appropriate roadside address number (Local Government Act).