Geoff

The Australian taxpayer has already paid to collect/produce much of this data. Where it doesn't have private data, it should be made available on an "as-is" basis (reducing post processing costs) under an appropriate Open Source license (perhaps LGPL?). This would enable innovators and IT business in Australia to make rapid and timely use of the data and provide improved services to the Australian people. The base data is still available to competitors should they believe they can provide better services with it. Contrast this with the farce of map data in Australia where data collected with Australian taxpayers money was simply handed over to a private company to control. That company has essentially profited from our taxes and simply resold that data onto Google to provide a decent map service to end-users. It has added very little value, but has priced that data high enough to stop most small business in Australia making use it of directly. That data should be available to all Australia individuals and companies to value add instead of it simply providing value to a massive US company which could afford the high entry costs.