Australia’s national standards covering bicycles and related products are being reviewed.
The standards cover consumer safety aspects of the products.
The current standard was last updated in 2004, and although several attempts have been made to bring it up to date since then, governments of the day were happy to let the regulations rot.
Now, with the crisis of e-bike regulation upon us, Canberra officialdom has realised that the underlying regulatory settings for conventional bicycles also need attention.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is conducting the limited review to:
- increase compliance options by referencing appropriate voluntary Australian and overseas standards that provide an equivalent or better level of safety
- determine if adding dynamic references is appropriate, so updates to referenced voluntary standards flow through to the mandatory standard.
Significant changes such as altering the scope of the mandatory standard or other major requirements (such as performance measures) are not being considered in this review.
Although limited, this will enable contemporary bicycle standards in use in Europe to be incorporated into the Australian standards and, most importantly, be automatically updated when the original is updated.
And it will assist with standards for categories such as mountain bikes, gravel bikes and cargo bikes to be introduced into Australia.
The end result should be fewer recalls such as Bicycle Network publishes in these pages. It seems like every few weeks another bike products is recalled because of engineering or manufacturing deficiencies, putting riders at risk.
Note that these standards do not apply to second-hand bicycles, power assisted bicycles and other bicycles specifically excluded by the mandatory standard.
Submit your feedback on the options by 7 November 2025.
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