Data sources & licences
Everything on this site comes from published government data. This page names each dataset, its licence, and whether that licence permits commercial use and derivative works — because those two answers decide what may be published here at all.
| Dataset | Licence | Commercial use | Derivatives |
|---|---|---|---|
| NSW Planning Portal — Online DA Data API NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure · Every development application lodged on the NSW Planning Portal since 2019 423,148 applications, as loaded 23 Aug 2026 |
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 | Yes | Yes |
| ABS Building Approvals by Local Government Area Australian Bureau of Statistics · Residential building approvals, every Australian local government area, monthly 187,896 dwellings approved in 12 months, as loaded 23 Aug 2026 |
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International | Yes | Yes |
| NSW heritage — LEP items and State Heritage Register NSW Department of Planning / Heritage NSW · Heritage items listed in council Local Environmental Plans, plus the State Heritage Register 41,981 listed items, as loaded 23 Aug 2026 |
Creative Commons Attribution | Yes | Yes |
| ABS 2021 Census — Selected Medians and Averages Australian Bureau of Statistics · Median rent, mortgage repayment, household income and household size for every statistical area 2,472 statistical areas, as loaded 22 Aug 2026 |
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International | Yes | Yes |
| ASIC — Company Dataset Australian Securities and Investments Commission · Every registered Australian company: name, ACN, ABN, status, type, registration date 3,999,184 companies, as loaded 22 Aug 2026 |
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia | Yes | Yes |
| NSW Valuer General — bulk Property Sales Information Valuer General NSW · Every NSW property sale since 1990 — WITHDRAWN from this site, see below |
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 | No | No |
The one we withdrew
The NSW Valuer General publishes bulk Property Sales Information under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: attribution, non-commercial use only, no derivative works. Suburb medians, a price index and yield ratios are all derivative works, and this is a commercial site. We published that data, described the licence as simply “Creative Commons”, and were wrong to. It has been withdrawn — those pages now return 451. The data remains free to obtain directly from the Valuer General for non-commercial use.
How to read a figure on this site
| Label | Means |
|---|---|
| Official fact | Published directly by the source, shown with its effective date. |
| Calculated | A deterministic computation over records we hold — the method, inputs and denominator are stated wherever one appears. |
| Observed | Captured from an allowed source at a stated time. Never described as current after that. |
| Inference | A relationship no source asserts directly. Match method and confidence are given, and it is never presented as fact. |
Example: a council's median decision time is Calculated — lodgement to determination, over the applications carrying both dates, stated per council. The dwellings approved beside it are an Official fact from the ABS.
Our own published data
Where we compute something worth reusing, we publish it under the same terms we ask of others — see council development activity, released as an open dataset with a machine-readable distribution.