auDA had over $12 million sitting in the bank. This year they made another $2 million profit but could have made far more had they not spent $1.8 million on consultants and many other items to excess.
You constantly say they spend "to excess", yet also complain that they have money in the bank? It's counter intuitive.
Do you want them to spend the money they earn, or do you simply want them to earn less? Because if you think by auDA cutting their fee means better value for consumers then you are wrong as I have already explained above.
What auDA should be doing is paying board members significantly more so that we attract higher quality, completely impartial candidates (absolutely no offence intended to any previous, sitting, or running members). I also think that auDA should be using some of that money to raise brand awareness throughout the country so that people are aware of the benefits of owning and using a .au domain name.
The auDA web site should become a marketplace for registrars and registered resellers which includes a domain search followed by a link to each provider and their prices. This would actively increase engagement and awareness of auDA and hopefully attract more members.
As John Swinson right pointed out the management of the wholesale pricing has been poor and has not kept pace globally, with any innovation or price competitiveness.
I've already pointed out in another post that when compared dollar for dollar .au is already cheaper than .com, so I don't think you have a problem with price. I think there needs to be a conversation around the mandatory 2 year registration
BEFORE any progress is made on direct registrations because I feel that this should be in line with other global TLD's.
the FACT is on many other extension they are used by registrars and resellers to also package with hosting and other services
You can package it with hosting now, but that doesn't mean you pay any less for it. What some registry operators do is provide rebates or other incentives for registrars to bundle or outright sell at discounted rates, but that is entirely up to the registry operators and whatever marketing budget they have been allocated for that particular TLD.
Is is true that over $10 million a year ( or how much exactly?) is being sent offshore to Neustar Inc / Golden Gate Capital?
I estimate that at least this much is going offshore and I am totally against it. I think that the registry tender process should have excluded those who are not 100% Australian companies, but I'm also a realist and in doing so I believe you would have had very little if any competition which is bad news.
ANY ATTEMPTS AT MINIMUM PRICE FIXING, ANTI COMPETITIVE BEHAVIOUR ETC SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED BY THE ACCC AND GOVERNMENT
Every single potential registry operator and registrar would be able to successfully argue that the wholesale price of .au domain names has remained the same for many years, while CPI, inflation, and almost every other key indicator has risen in those years.
And unlike physical products, it's very hard to argue the case for discounting based on volume since there is no real tangible benefit by having more domain names in the registry and DNS. In fact, you could probably argue the opposite but I don't run a registry so I'm unsure of the exact costings.
I am against any auDA subcontractors, paid service providers, sub contract wholesale registry contract providers being on the auDA Board no matter who they are or what country they are from.
Does this mean that you are also against registrar owners being on the board?