Thank you Vic - it's nice to know that someone understands the issue (and
actually reads what's written in the postings).

Moving on... There is a body of people called the Australian Expatriates.
These are Australians living in other countries of the world who wish to
keep in touch with Australia, their familles and friends, business
associates etc. etc. A sample of the way these people work occurred when we
served a web-based video-link to soldiers in East Timor so O/S relatives
could keep in touch.

They would like to register the domain australianexpatriots.com.au -
Obviously they would like the .au extension because they are proud
Australians and would like to promote this fact to all and sundry - they do
not want a .org because they are not a formalised organisation... and in
fact they are to a degree commercial in nature, because one of their aims is
to financially support Aussies overseas facing difficulties - however they
cannot register an Australian Business name (none of them are in Australia
and they do not do business in this country) - they cannot form an
Australian Association for the same reasons - the "motivators" for this are
Aussies mostly based in New York and London. Obviously they do not have an
ABN. Perhaps the only thing they could do would be to register as charity,
however even this is very difficult for them under the current Australian
Charitable Collections Act.

To the policy-makers of this list - how can they register the domain name
they want? (or Vic do I just tell them that they are yet more "collateral
damage" of a paranoiac mindset?)

PS - I was recently asked to register a domain for the flood-ravaged town of
Coonamble in NSW. The applicant is the local Internet Centre with the
registered business name "Coonamble Internet Centre", and even though one of
the company administrators is the local Council... guess what...? - yep,
when I asked about a .au registration I was basically told not to bother
unless the registration came directly from the Council... now I won't detail
here exactly why it was inappropriate for the Council to do this (they have
their reasons which is not the business of anybody on this list however they
are quite justified), so we registered the name overseas - what a great
example of Aussie support to a community in crisis.

Don