There’s been a licensed electrician certifying the power installation at every ENTECH Adelaide, and at our cost! Most exhibitors have never known — it gets handled before they plug in. That’s the South Australian horror story: the electrical Certificate of Compliance – eCoC. It’s a state-based legal requirement that every temporary electrical installation be certified by a licensed electrician before it can be energised. If that requirement spreads to other SA venues, or other states start asking why they don’t have something equivalent, it stops being handled quietly. It means an attending electrician on every bump-in, testing your gear, signing off before power is live. Every show. Everywhere.
We all go out of business.
The reason that hasn’t happened yet is not because the regulatory framework doesn’t support it. It’s because nobody has pushed on it. That is changing.
The Australian Government committed funding in the 2025–26 Budget to design a national electrical licensing scheme. It is being designed right now. A national framework built without input from the live entertainment industry will repeat every failure of every state scheme before it — no recognition of show power as a specialist category, no pathway for technicians working to AS/NZS 3002, no acknowledgement that touring crews work without a licensed electrician on staff in any jurisdiction because none has ever existed. The window to shape this is open. It will not stay open.
The second issue is test and tag. AS/NZS 3760 was written for office appliances and construction tools. It is being applied without modification to touring LED walls, broadcast camera chains, and professional audio infrastructure. Franchise operators with no entertainment industry knowledge tag individual items and leave. The system-level risk — insulation integrity, earth continuity, leakage current across a commissioned assembly — goes untested. The same national reform process is the opportunity to fix this too, if the industry makes a submission that addresses both.
In 2012, this industry sat in a room at ENTECH and decided to do something about WHS. The working party that followed produced the LPA Safety Guidelines. The electricity chapter was never finished. The federal government is now designing the framework that will govern electrical licensing across every Australian jurisdiction for the foreseeable future. This is the moment to finish it.
Session runs at 12 midday all cities, hosted by Julius Grafton and with a secret guest (identity hidden for legal reasons) for the first session in Sydney.
Come if you run shows. Come if you supply power. Come if you pay for test and tag and wonder what you’re actually buying. Come if you have any idea what it would do to your business if every bump-in needed a licensed electrician on site.
• Tuesday 19 May — Hordern Pavilion
• Thursday 21 May — Brisbane Showgrounds
• Tuesday 26 May — Melbourne Showgrounds
• Thursday 28 May — Adelaide Showgrounds
• Tuesday 2 June — HPC Stadium, Perth
Register free www.entech-roadshow.com
