Ugh, all the recent articles I've seen on this are subtly or entirely wrong about the reasons for a datum change (though this article is a lot better than most)

Ugh, all the recent articles I've seen on this are subtly or entirely wrong about the reasons for a datum change (though this article is a lot better than most). It's possible to account and correct for most of the 1.5 meters when transforming between GDA94 (the current Australian national datum) and ITRF2008 (effectively what's used by GPS), and the transformation published by Geoscience Australia is particularly simple, having only 14 parameters. If you want to know about this from a reliable source, the ICSM site is the place to go. They actually know what they're talking about, and their faq in particular explains a lot of points of jargon and convention rather clearly: http://www.icsm.gov.au/gda2020/faqs-2.html http://www.icsm.gov.au/gda2020/faqs-2.html