How we source this
Every claim on this site is traceable to a named Australian authority, and that is enforced by the build rather than promised in an editorial policy. Here is exactly what that means, and what it does not.
Every factual claim cites a public authority
We cite 107 sources: state and federal regulators, standards bodies, and government rebate schemes. Every URL was fetched and its real HTTP response recorded on the date shown. Where a government site blocks automated clients and returns 403, we record that rather than reporting a check we did not complete.
The build fails if a page has no source
This is the part that matters. Content is typed data, and validation runs at build time: a page with no source, an unknown source id, a broken cross-reference or an unused source in the registry all stop the deploy. All 220 pages pass, because a page that did not could not have shipped.
Which individual statements carry a source, and which do not
Sources sit at two levels here, and we would rather describe the weaker one accurately than imply the stronger one everywhere. Every page lists the authorities it rests on. On top of that, individual statements can carry a numbered marker linking to the specific source behind that sentence — 26 of the site's 984 content blocks do so today. The published rule is that a block asserting a legal, regulatory or safety requirement must carry one; practical and explanatory writing need not, because hanging a government citation off a paragraph about what usually drives a quote would dress experience up as regulation. An automated audit reads every block, matches requirement language mechanically, and fails the build when new content states a rule without a source. It cannot retrospectively force the existing corpus, so the count above is the honest current figure and it goes up rather than down.
We publish no invented price ranges
Australia has no authoritative public price index for most trade work. Rather than publish a plausible-looking range, our cost pages publish only figures a named authority actually publishes, such as rebate amounts, scheme caps and capacity tiers, then explain what genuinely drives the number on a quote. Where we have no figure, the page says so and says why.
Answers are written in-house, and say so
Every answer carries a TradieAnswers editorial byline. It is written by us, checked against the sources listed at the foot of the page. We do not attach answers to named individuals we cannot verify, and there is no code path on this site capable of rendering one. The byline type makes an unverifiable named contributor unrepresentable rather than merely discouraged.
Where rules vary by state, we name the regulator instead
Australian trade regulation is state-based and changes. An answer that restates a specific dollar threshold is more satisfying to read and worse to rely on than one that tells you which regulator publishes yours. So where something varies, we say that it varies, name who holds the answer, and tell you what to search for.
Sources carry dates, pages do not carry a stamp
Every source shows the date its URL was fetched and the response we got, which is the date that actually helps you judge a citation. Pages themselves no longer print a formatted last-checked line, because it was the same date on every page and told you nothing except that the site was assembled in batches. The machine-readable modification date is still published in each page's structured data, where search engines look for it.
Some questions are titled the way people type them
A number of pages carry a heading in lower case, without punctuation, as somebody would type it into a search box, with the tidied version of the question directly underneath. Those headings are labelled "people search this as", because that is exactly what they are: editorial phrasing chosen to match how the query actually arrives. They were previously shown in quotation marks, which read like we were quoting a specific reader, and we were not. No named reader submitted any of them, and there is deliberately no field in our content model that could record an invented name, suburb or asking date against a question. Where a real person submits one through the ask page, that is handled separately and with their agreement.
Nobody pays to appear
There is no advertising product, no sponsored content and no paid placement on this site. We do not sell leads and we do not take payment to mention a business. Links out go to regulators and standards bodies, because those are the things worth linking to.
What we don’t have yet
Being straight about the gaps is part of the standard, so:
- No named tradespeople yet. The long-term intent is answers signed by real, licensed, consenting tradespeople with their licence checked against a state register. We have not recruited them, so we do not claim them. The site is built so that adding one later is a field on an existing answer rather than a rewrite.
- No price data of our own. We hold no quote or invoice dataset, which is why there are no ranges. If that changes, it will be published with its methodology and sample size attached.
- This is general information. It is not advice for your specific property or dispute. Where something turns on your circumstances, such as a contract, a defect claim or a neighbour dispute, the regulator or a qualified adviser is the right next step, and we say so on the page.