KRE has probably forgotten the mailthread by now, but I asked him about
instantiating .<state>.AU under .AU long before this process started, when
qld.gov.au was beginning to come online. Back in the early 1990's.

If I recall his answers from then correctly, It is extremely unlikely that
an independant process could expect to retain control of the domain-spaces
named after the states. And including the state governments directly in debates
of 2LD is as stupid as letting commercial interests predominate in 2LD or any
other agenda: It will not aide the process of retaining what is good and sane
about our namespace, nor will it reduce conflict.

We have too much government here. We do not need to fragment a national 
namespace into state sub-instances. And if for whatever reason the states
do deserve to exist as named entities directly under .AU, then it is not
as soley commercial interest domains: there are plenty of sub-domains who
can show good reason to exist under there, in the same sense as .org.au and
all the other 2LD.AU. You inherit all of the responsibilities of .AU in this
model.

Instead of desperately trying to create a bigger mess to manage, can we go
back to trying to rationally manage the mess we already have please?

cheers
	-George
--
George Michaelson         |  DSTC Pty Ltd
Email: ggm&#167;dstc.edu.au    |  University of Qld 4072
Phone: +61 7 3365 4310    |  Australia
  Fax: +61 7 3365 4311    |  http://www.dstc.edu.au