DOCUMENTATION AND OTHER VENDOR REQUIREMENTS FOR C-TICK AND RCM

OTHER MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS:

C TICK
The C-tick mark is a now-discontinued marking  (since March 2016) that asserts that a product is "EMC compliant". 
EMC (Electro Magnetic Compatibility)  means that a product does not radiate excessive amounts of electrical interference. For example, a mains powered food mixer or electric drill should not produce buzzing in a nearby AM radio, or interfere with TV reception.
EMC compliance is administered by the  ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) which is  Federal Government body.
NB: THIS HAS NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH ELECTRICAL SAFETY, which is administered by independent bodies in each state!
The posting of a C-tick was basically a way of confirming that the importer or manufacturer has a folder of Test Reports and other documentation, which would be produced on demand by an ACMA inspector. The supplier could simply have a C-tick symbol next to their own contact details or ABN, OR they could use a coded ACMA registration number eg "N12434".
The ACMA registration numbers gave a confidential listing of the details of the person or company actually holding the EMC compliance documents. This could be the importers themselves, or an agent they have contracted to handle their compliance documentation, since not every importer is qualified to to do this. This provided an easy way of tracking down the compliance documents, wiithout the nuisance of the Compliance agent receiving calls about product issues not related to compliance.
Note that huge numbers of appliances have been imported with meaningless C-tick marks! A C-tick is supposed to be always accompanied by some means of identifying the company ot person holding the complaince documents. A C-tick by itself is meaningless.
In March 2016, in Australia the C-Tick was replaced by the RCM (Regulatory Compliance Mark). That is, the RCM covers both EMC and Electrical safety.
In New Zealand, for products incorporating a radio transmitter (eg Bluetooth, WiFi etc) the  C-tick was replaced by the "R-NZ" mark. Like the RCM it no longer carries any identifying code.

RCM
Regulatory Compliance Mark.
This marking basically represents a declaration by the importer or manufacturer to the effect of: "This product meets all the regulatory requirements that are applicable to it in Australia." The RCM is similar to the "CE" mark required by EU customs to import goods into EU countries. 
The letters "CE" are the abbreviation of French phrase "Conformité Européene" which literally means "European Conformity". Supposedly, if a product-related incident occurs with a CE-marked product and it is found to be in violation of the relevant legislation, the manufacturer or importer can be prosecuted. However, this will only happen if there is an actual incident, and in practice huge amounts of illegally CE-marked products are shipped into Europe. To get past EU customs, the product ONLY has to have a CE marking on it, it is rarely if ever, checked. Hence it is often facetiously referred to as the "China Export" mark…. 
NOTE: The CE mark has no (0) relevance in Australia! The RCM means more or less the same thing in Australia as CE does in the EU, but a CE mark cannot be used  as a substitute for an RCM.

RCM AND ELECTRICAL SAFETY
In Australia, as far as electrical safety is concerned, the RCM  is meant to indicate that any high-risk goods (Declared Articles) have been registered on the EESS database, and so supersedes the old practice of placing of the approval number on the rating label. The intention is that approval number and its expiry date can now be obtained from the ERAC database, by looking up the model number.
However, there are currently  a couple of problems with this:
A. The NSW Dept. of Fair Trading does not fully aprticipate in the EESS scheme, as there are problems with NSW State law allowing State legislation to be placed in the hands of a private organization. 
However, the DFT will allow products that were approved by organizations OTHER than NSW DFT to be sold in NSW just marked with an RCM, PROVIDED the approval details can easily be found on the ERAC database. Since products approved by the NSW DFT will not necessarily be found on the database, those HAVE to carry the "traditional" NSW DFT approval marking as before. The NSW DFT will also always accept products carrying "traditional" Approval markings from other approval bodies, with or without the RCM.
However, other states have legislated the requirement for EESS registration and the use of the RCM, so, unless an importer wishes to make a different version of a product for the NSW market, it must be registered on the ERAC database, marked with an RCM, AND the NSW approval number (if applicable). The easiest approach is to simply use both an RCM and the Full Approval number on all products!
B. The ERAC database has not been very well implemented, so it can be painfully difficult sometimes to find approvals. For example, for some Victorian approvals, you have to add "/00" to the approval number actually quoted to find it using the ERAC search function, but the listings it finds DON'T have the "/00" added.  Another headache is where, for example a plugpack supplier has an approval for a range of voltages, such as models ABCXYZ-12-050 for the 12V 500mA version, and ABCXYZ-06-100 for a 6V 1A version and so on. Problem is, often the approval will give the "model name" as something like: "ABCXYZ-VV-III" where VV gives Volts and III gives current in 10mA increments. If you don't know what letters they use for the coding scheme, you'll never find the approval number by just entering the model number shown on the rating label. The only way you can sometimes do it is to search by manufacturer's name, and then see if you can find it on the (sometimes lengthy) list it throws up.






