Well part of my point is who knows how much $$ is being spent in an ongoing 
basis because there is zero transparency.

Regardless of this, the GM of auCD was absorbed into auDA staff. So the salary 
of at least one exec level staff member for starters is an ongoing cost. 

They are still running the bespoke technology on the 'site in a box' solution. 
You are going to find that's not free, nor are the ongoing 'educational 
seminars', processing the massive amounts of parperwork on each CGDN 
registration etc etc. 

These are shall I remind you domain names Rod. They are used to resolve to an 
IP address on a web server. Explain to me how for example:

kinglake.vic.au
kinglake.org.au (or asn.au, or com.au)

Is any better of more useful? It's simply an indefensible argument. Again $2M 
on a failed social experiement to register 200 domains, is lunacy when there 
are existing not for profit spaces, that I'll remind you are actually a 
fraction of the price (and effort) for these communities to secure.

I think community based websites especially in regional Australia are a great 
idea. I think creating an entirely new namespace and pissing away $2M to do it 
is not a great idea.

You of course can disagree with me, but you're drawing a long bow with your 
argument so far.

Regards, Brett 




> Kirk,
> My point is the money has been spend already to set the whole thing up
> and the ongoing cost is bugger all so why not keep it running as it has
> use for various communities. I was pointing out the bushfires as one
> reason to justify their being no good shutting it down when you already
> have the space open and set up. What is the ongoing cost now?
> Rod