In August 2026 auDA (.au Domain Administration Limited) agreed in principle to change the .au Licensing Rules for domain names ending in .com.au or .net.au, meaning a business name registration would require an exact match or acronym in order to keep their existing domain name.
This is a trusted country code TLD extension used by millions and has been around since the late 90s!
What (f) does
To hold a .com.au you need to prove you have a connection to the name. (a) to (e) are name matching: your registered company, business, personal, partnership or trust name, or your trade mark, matches the domain. (f) is the other one, and it is the sensible one. The domain relates to a service you provide, goods you sell, an event you run, or premises you operate.
The change would mean you can’t register a creative business name anymore, even if you already own it and have built brand and consumer trust.
Recommendation 2 kills (f).
Who actually wears it
Well, not corporate or large companies, that’s for sure. They have legal teams, trade marks, and a company name that matches their brand. They’ll be mostly unaffected.
It’s the plumber trading under his own name whose site is a service keyword. The cafe that registered the name of the shop instead of the company behind it. The couple who bought a small business and kept the domain. These are the people and small businesses that will suffer from this stupid policy change.
In order to keep what they already own, they will be forced to go to ASIC, register a business name that matches the domain, and lodge a change of registrant. A shell registration that will never trade, never invoice, never employ anyone, renewed forever, purely to satisfy a rule that didn’t exist when they registered.
Estimates run from 1 million to 2.7 million domains caught, out of roughly 3.4 million domains held in the registry. auDA hasn’t published its own number on how many domains they believe will be impacted. But many of those domain owners are running a business, not reading policy PDFs, and will find out when a renewal fails.
It’s not final, and that’s the point
Approved in principle only. auDA still has to draft the rules and consult before the board locks it in. Right now they are working out whether anyone cares.
I would really appreciate it if you take 2 minutes and show your support on the petition below.
Sign the petition: https://c.org/rsThXQcsZb
