The world’s most trusted and popular professional Domain Name Industry website, since 2003, DNJournal.com, just weighed in on how the world is seeing the auDA Board’s monumental stupid decision to change Australian’s domain name licensing rules.
Everyone who is interested in Domain Names and Domain Investing, across the world, is reading this today.
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0908.htm
In today’s DNJournal post, Ron Jackson writes:
In Bewildering Move Australia’s .AU Domain Administrator (AuDA) Decapitates Its Own .com.au SLD
The auDA Board Just Voted to Destroy the .com.au Name Space
auDA, the administrator of Australia’a .au top level domain and parent of second level versions like .com.au, .net.au and .org.au – decided to stab their loyal .com.au customers in the back by passing a rule that will make it too expensive for hundreds of thousands of domain owners to renew their names.
AuDA did this by passing a rule saying the registrant had to have a trademark or company name matching the domain they held in order to keep it. With the cost of getting a new business registration or trademark and maintaining it running into four figures many will lose names they bought in good faith years ago thanks to AuDA’s decision to change the rules in the middle of the game (a change that, not surprisingly, will make the government a ton of new revenue at the expense of Australia’s small business community).
It is quite odd that the new rule applies only to the .com.au flavor of Australian domains – not .net.au, .org.au or even the top level marquee domain – .au (a direct option that only opened to the public for the first time in 2022). Only .com.au – the one business people counted on – is affected in an inexplicable move that instantly makes it a toxic TLD.
One veteran Aussie domain investor/developer, Ned O’Meara, wondered if this was a calculated plan meant to drive up .au sales that, with about 300,000 registered domains, remain just a small fraction of the millions registered in .com.au. The issue with that now is how could anyone trust AuDA not to eventually pull the same bait and switch on .au holders thatthey have on com.au registrants? The one thing they have succeeded in doing with this move is taint the entirety of one of the world’s great country code TLDs.
The mistake is so monumental, we would guess that between now and when the rule gets implemented, auDA is going to face an enormous amount of blowback from the business community and a variety of legal challenges that may stop the madness before the damage is irreversible.
Even IF this monumental mistake is wound back before full catastrophic implementation, the damage has already been done. The current Board Members are clearly NO LONGER FIT to have a say in how the Australian domain name space should run. Not only have they allowed this monumental screw-up to occur in the first place, let’s not forget they have also continuously allowed a private monopoly drop auction to exist for 6 years, where one private company is judge, jury and executioner over WHO ultimately gets to acquire expired domain names and how much they have to pay for the privilege.
The specific auDA Board Members who thought this was a good idea to approve, who talked other weaker Board Members into actually going along with this insane, stupid idea, MUST be sacked and replaced by smarter, more logical and rational professionals who actually care about Australian businesses and entrepreneurs, and who want to preserve the past 26 year legacy history of how Australian domain names and the .au ccTLD have been seen by the world.
Who is the auDA Board as at September 2026?
- Marina Go, Sandra Davey, Peter Elford, Brett Fenton, Sarv Girn, Sandra Hook, Claire Rogers, Thu-Trang Tran, Mike Trovato, Tina Wyer.
And these people just green-lit this decision because of the recommendations of these 4 people; Matt Healy (Chair), Selvi Kannan, Ian Kelly, and Ross Creelman, who made up the majority of the au Licensing Rules Review Panel 2025, who CLAIM they “extensively” reached out to the public, but we claim they DID NOT “extensively” reach out to the public: auDA lied about ‘Policy Advisory Panel’ conducting an “extensive community consultation process”. Less than 0.019% of Australian businesses were informed.
More information about this whole debacle can be found in our first article: The day auDA ruined 26 years of Australian domain name trust and value.
Come on Australia, you are better than this!
Who are the auDA Directors?
What are their names and why did they vote for this?
auDA Board’s monumental stupidity is now international news, and growing” — headline really says it all. What gets me is this kind of overreach doesn’t just hurt .au, it chips away at trust in ccTLDs generally. Once registrants start worrying their domain could get pulled on a technicality, that fear sticks around for years, even after the policy gets reversed. Wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being the case study other ccTLD registries point to next time they’re tempted to tighten renewal rules without grandfathering existing owners.