On 17 May 2000, James Tizard wrote:

>I am interested in whether other Governments have addressed the policy
issue of appropriate domains for 'corporatized' government
instrumentalities - ie should they register domains in .com.au, .gov.au or
both?

Dot com is so widely accepted in the community that governments may well
want to capture a dot com name as well as the dot gov

Austrade is a good example.  If you enter www.austrade.com.au there is an
error message saying something like "You appear to have enterered
austrade.com.au.  The correct address is austrade.gov.au".  The server then
swirches you to the correct site.

Australia Post uses auspost.com.au but not auspost.gov.au.  As it is a
commercial agency rather than a a Government Department as such, this is
perhaps to be expected.

It is also somertimes useful to register in the United States rather than
Australia.  The US domain name AUSTRALIA.COM was previously registered by
Austrade but this name has now been transferred to the Australian Tourism
Commisission and is used to promote tourism to Australia.  They do not use
australia.com.au which is blocked.

Patrick Corliss