>Who created this closed-shop environment in relation Melbourne.IT ?
>

"we" did, Peter - the community of interested parties. 

There is a mechanism (or rather, a body charged with creating a mechanism)
to open up competition in the australian namespace in terms of registry
service providers. Unfortunately it has produced no actual outcomes in its
first year of operation, despite a good start and a lot of effort on the
part of a lot of people.

Sooner or later, a relevant element of the government will perhaps  give up
waiting and forcibly cause competition to happen. I sincerely hope 'we' get
our act in gear before that happens :)

In brief, the way it works is this:

- ADNA (or someone) manages the nearly impossible: putting a proposal on
this mailing list which NOONE objects to, and which provides a mechanism
for competition to occur in parallel to Melbourne IT in the provision of
commercial delegation services in the com.au namespace.

- that community-agreed mechanism and/or additional registrars are
presented to Robert Elz for consideration as additional operators in the
com.au namespace
(if that is established as what 'the community' does really want, that is)

- Robert Elz says 'yep' and they all get on with it.

[Robert - my apologies if I have misinterpreted the steps above, or got
them wrong in some regard - if I have, a correction in this list would
undoubtedly assist us all in understanding the processes here]

Regards,
Simon
---
Simon Hackett, Technical Director, Internode Systems Pty Ltd
31 York St [PO Box 284, Rundle Mall], Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia
Email: simon§internode.com.au  Web: http://www.on.net
Phone: +61-8-8223-2999          Fax: +61-8-8223-1777