Robert Elz, the reclusive programmer who ran the Australian domain name registry out of
an office at Melbourne University,
has been deposed, and control of .com.au handed to
a private body of some sort.
On one hand, Elz has been slow to put domains through (a friend of mine who
worked at an ISP had US clients screaming down the phone at him because a
.com.au they ordered hadn't been put through for months); on the other hand,
he had principles (he refused to accept MelbourneIT stock options, for one,
and his judgments tended to be Solomonically fair), and the new keepers of
.com.au look like a corporate monopoly of some sinister, neo-liberalist sort.
(I worked at Melbourne University, in the same building as Elz, for a year
once, and don't recall seeing him once. All I know is that he apparently has
a UNIX-sysadmin beard and is rumoured to disappear even more completely when
there's a cricket match worth watching.)