Well, I found out by accident that ARIA had introduced Silver awards.

The information below comes from their accreditations page:

ARIA Silver Awards

- Only issued in relation to product distributed by ARIA members
- Only awarded to albums by Australian artists
- 20,000 unit threshold needs to be achieved within three years of the album’s initial release
- Only applicable to albums released after 1 January 2021

I don't really know exactly when the Silver Awards were introduced as ARIA hasn't made an official announcement.

Was anyone else aware of these Silver awards?

I want to say it feels familiar just seeing it now on the PDF but I'm not confident. Don't think it's been enacted anyhow.

I haven't seen a silver award since Go-Set (that was 25K).