Quoting Adrian Stephan on Friday December 21, 2001:
| 
| I think you will find that when the ACN system was introduced it reconciled
| many of the duplications.  I can vaguely recall the admin stuff we went
| through at that time.  If you go into the ASIC data base and do a name check
| it will actually show names by states.  There could be some instances like
| this but my understanding is that over the last 10 years there has been an
| attempt to stop this happening.  It could happen though and then it is quite
| simple to fix the RBNs:  xxxvic, xxxnsw, xxxtas, etc.

I don't know the specifics, but the ASIC test for duplication between
RBNs and ACNs is flawed (or not uniformly applied across all states).
Just recounting my own experience:

  * I applied for 'Cynosure' as a business name in Western
    Australia in 1995, and it was rejected on the grounds there 
    was a Cynosure P/L.
  * Cynosure P/L was deactivated in 1997.
  * I applied again in 2000 with a rejection on the same grounds.
  * 'Cynosure' was allocated as an RBN in Victoria in 2001.
    Presumably I would still be rejected.

On the suffix idea, I'm not sure how desirable that would be for RBN
holders.
 
kim