People who are on dns and iamems have already seen the discussion on
  iamems.  People on dns and not iamems have not seen much on this mailing
  list in June.  Here are the messages for June before George's posting :-
  	David.Jones      18  DNS: DNA for .gov.au namespace
  	Ian W            33  Re: DNS: DNA for .gov.au namespace
  
  Perhaps someone would like to tell dns what has been going on in iamems.
  For that matter perhaps IntIAA would like to tell dns something about the
  current status of ADNA.

The board of ISOC-AU decided in the light of concerns with ADNA to
remain outside the formative process. I think the timing of the decision
was unfortunate in how close to last weeks ADNA meeting, and in the extent
to which we communicated it back to the ISOC-AU membership and got their
buy-in (although subsequent debate suggests we had the essentials right there)

There has been some rehearsal of what those reasons were. Pauline Van Winsen
as our participant in the DNS wg can provide the details of the decision if
thats felt appropriate by the DNS list membership. I think she's off work just
now so that might take some time.

Right now, I think feedback from the ADNA formation meeting to clarify who
are the members and elected officers and what formal resolutions the meeting
made is vital to understand where ADNA and this list lie in the general space
of DNS issues in Australia. ADNA includes parties from a range of backgrounds
and certainly have a good cross-section of support, particularly from the
business sector and those with direct concerns on com.au names, although some
sectors of the existing 2LD framework are noticably absent, and thus have
appeared to send somewhat 'less than supportive' signals in respect of their
respective domains and accordingly a wider consensus. I think IN THE LONG TERM
there are good reasons to believe a consensus can emerge about .AU but maybe
not right now. Certainly its going to take a bit of work and time.

It would probably remain ISOC-AU's contention that this WG/List has achieved a
good final result in respect of com.au and its governance but that .AU issues
are fundamentally different, and that right now, a process coming out of
addressing com.au may not be the best way to proceed to a suitable resolution
of the .AU question. I'm not even sure I know what the questions *are* for .AU
and if they have been that well discussed here. Judging by the recent postings
its certainly not been the topic under discussion.

Informal indications sent to iamems suggest that ADNA may have (re)defined
their role as initially that of guardian of .com.au, and if thats true, I
suspect ISOC-AU and possibly others would have little difficulty in being
supportive of that outcome. We're not complete bastards, we can see when
somebody deserves support for making a good decision.

Please don't mistake my feelings on this. It wasn't easy for ISOC-AU to
decide to 'throw a spanner in the works' but we had a suprising amount
of unity on this matter: We just weren't comfortable with how things were
proceeding on ADNA, and didn't want to join for the sake of joining when
we didn't see those concerns being addressed. I think ADNA includes people
of obvious ability, and you'll want to listen carefully to all sides of
the (ensuing?) debate on this one.

I don't know if KRE is a recipient of this particular list. I would certainly
like him to be aware of outcomes and debate because I think he will be a 
critical component of any future resolution of the .AU issues. 

cheers

-George
--
George Michaelson         |  connect.com.au pty/ltd
Email: ggm§connect.com.au |  c/o AAPT,
Phone: +61 7 3834 9976    |  level 8, the Riverside Centre,
  Fax: +61 7 3834 9908    |  123 Eagle St, Brisbane QLD 4000