auDA lied about ‘Policy Advisory Panel’ conducting an “extensive community consultation process”. Less than 0.019% of Australian businesses were informed.

On September 7 2026, auDA stated (https://www.auda.org.au/public-impact/have-your-say/policy-panels/au-licensing-rules-review-2025/)

In September 2025, the auDA Board appointed an external Policy Advisory Panel to undertake a multi stakeholder review of the .au Licensing Rules over 2025-26.

The Panel conducted an extensive community consultation process that invited the public to contribute their feedback on potential changes to the Rules via virtual town halls, in-person events in multiple capital cities, stakeholder meetings and written submissions.

When auDA state the Panel “conducted an extensive community consultation process“, they LIED.

Here’s the maths that proves auDA have overstated the “extensive community consultation process” when they use the word “extensive”.

There are currently 2.8 million Australian businesses.

There are currently 3.8 million Australian companies.

The total amount of registered Australian domain names is currently 3.3 million for “.com.au” and 814,000 for “Direct .au”. That’s over 4 million domain names.

auDA state there are 1,702,174 domain name registrants for all these domain names.

Now, let’s see how many people communicated with auDA’s ‘Policy Advisory Panel’ consultation process?

There were 127 in-person attendees, 205 webinar/town-hall participants.

With Written Submissions, there were 32 during phase 1 and 40 during phase 2 (published) and 6 (unpublished). It’s safe to say a lot of these submissions came from people who attended in person.

That’s a total of 332 people.

332.

That’s it?

So, out of the 1.7 million domain name registrants in Australia, with ABNs and ACNs, that are allowed to hold an Australian “.com.au” domain name, only 332 people knew about, and bothered to show up, to the “extensive community consultation process“

This is NOT extensive, at all.

That is 0.019% of people who use Australian domain names.

ZERO point ZERO ONE NINE PERCENT.

Not to mention, the Panel’s own minutes undercut the “extensive” claim – 20 July 2026: “even though attendance at the consultations was low the diverse views made for a good debate.”

There’s even a point where the Panel was told during Phase 2, “most participants want to retain the current allocation rules.” and not change them. That was a MAJORITY VIEW at one of the panel hearings. Then, insanely, the panel then voted 4–2 to go against the majority view.

And based on that teeny-tiny minuscule amount of people, auDA are willing to prepare an ‘implementation plan‘ to wind back 26 years of domain name licensing rules and delete hundreds of thousands of domain names after people paid millions of dollars in renewal fees over multiple decades?

The auDA Board is clearly delusional and broken.

All the rotten eggs in the auDA Board need to fired, and fast.