Rosemary Sinclair was the CEO of auDA from March 2020 until December 2024.
Back in April 2024, we wrote how she “did nothing in 4 years to create competition in the expired domain name drop catching aftermarket (by not approving any new Registrars). During her reign as CEO, Netfleet (an auDA Registrar that provided drop catching services) was sold to Trellian (another auDA Registrar that provides drop catching services – and owns Drop.com.au and Above.com). This sale created an anti-competitive monopoly allowing one single private company to dictate who can, and can not, purchase premium expired and deleted Australian domain names.”
If this sounds a little difficult to understand, let me break it down a little simpler for you…
Around 1500 Australian domain names “drop” every day. This means they expire or are deleted. An example of this is when Coles Supermarkets accidentally allowed “Superannuation.com.au” to drop (details here) and when someone accidentally allowed “Koala.com.au” to drop (details here). Great domain names like this drop regularly. And when people or companies bid to pay tens of thousands of dollars to buy these domain names back, there is only one single private company that dictates who can, and can not, purchase these expired and/or deleted domain names. And, this one single private company receives practically all of the money for themselves. I am literally saying that if a domain name is purchased for $10,000 then Drop.com.au keep all the money, minus less-than-$10. So they profit $9,990 on that one domain name. And so on… Take a look above at how much money they made from choosing who got to purchase “Superannuation.com.au“…
auDA and Rosemary Sinclair have known about this for four years now, and they did nothing to promote competition, including mothballing an application for a new Registrar. There were many applications for new Registrars during this time, some of whom could have become drop catchers. None were approved.
But don’t just take my word for it. Here is the actual data of every expired domain name that dropped and was caught from the beginning of July 2024 until the end of December, 2024 (last six months).

SEVEN of the TOP EIGHT of these Registrars (circled in pink above) are all OWNED by Above.com and Drop.com.au(.) They’re basically all the same company.
This means, Drop.com.au (and it’s related entities) caught 271797 domains over the past 6 months. This means, left to continue, Drop.com.au will catch more than 500,000 expired domain names, uncontested, every year going forward. Do the maths on that…
Meanwhile, all the other 6 Registrars only caught 562 domain names during the same period. Combined. And in reality, they didn’t really “catch” these domains, but these were most probably just hand-registered scraps that Drop.com.au disregarded.
This means Drop.com.au caught 99.8% of EVERY expired and/or deleted domain name that was dropped and re-purchased during the last six months.

99.8%
auDA and Rosemary Sinclair knew about this, or ought to have known, and chose to do nothing. They didn’t raise this situation in board meetings. They didn’t disclose this to the public. They didn’t inform the Australian government body that endorses them. And now Rosemary Sinclair has left auDA and ridden off into the sunset.
If this doesn’t show you how broken the trust and security of Australian domain names are, as at the end of 2024, I don’t know what else I can do for you.
In the next article, we will show you the single biggest company that Drop.com.au are allowing to purchase MOST of these expired and deleted domain names.
In the article after that, we will show you how auDA have broken their Terms of Endorsement by the Australian Government.
If you care about Australian domain names, please share this first article.