Good news for all the com domainers, bad news for all the fans of new extensions (and yes, that includes Duke
But, those people should be jailed! Spending about $ 130k US on a relatively stupid domain name, which they need to market anyway, is outright dumb. I mean, they could have reged anything for very little and market it the same way they will market this crap. Or they could have spend no more than $5k on .info extension. In addition, Tourism-Australia.com, also belongs to AU government and it sitting there waisted. And, how about .org? It also appears that those people also already own Australia.com, and SeeAustralia.com...
This AU senator had put it best:
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Senator O'Brien said he was amazed it was considered appropriate to select a name that came with such a high price-tag and he suspected the Government could have bargained harder.
"It's remarkable the Government picked a name knowing there was a cost to it," Senator O'Brien said. "It's regrettable and you could have done something better with the money - it's not as if it's an organisation to be marketed, it's there to do the marketing."
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That's my exact sentiment. They could have make up any other regfee combo name, or buy an existing .com for less than the price of that guy's attorney.
Anyway, this is the typical case of financial irresponsibility that governments world over are well known for.
I guess, when you're footing a bill with other people's money (taxpayers) you simply don't care.
Disgusting.