Consultation on proposed updates to the WHOIS Policy

Under our Terms of Endorsement from the Australian Government, auDA is required to ensure a stable, secure and reliable operation of the .au domain and administer a licensing regime for .au domain names based in multi-stakeholder processes.

We do this by adopting relevant technical standards and developing supporting policies for the .au domain with a multi-stakeholder approach.

The WHOIS policy sets out the principles, collection, disclosure and use of WHOIS data in the .au domain. This policy requires an update to document a third technical interface available for accessing registration data through a contemporary technical standard developed by the Internet Engineering Taskforce. The standard provides greater consistency, security and interoperability across registries and registrars that manage domain names and internet number resources.

Further detail is contained in the accompanying Explanatory Statement.

The public consultation for the WHOIS Policy Update commenced on Monday 15 December 2025 and closes at 5pm Friday 23 January 2026.

Please note that all submissions will be published on our website following a final decision on the proposed amendments unless you ask us to keep your submission private.

auDA reserves the right to redact or decline to publish the submission where it includes inappropriate content such as potentially defamatory material. We will advise you if such as decision is made.