One Nation’s pre-emptive strike backfires

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One Nation’s pre-emptive strike backfires

A pre-emptive strike by One Nation to register dozens of website addresses that could be used in the Indigenous Voice to ParliamentVoice to Parliament referendum campaign has backfired, with several of the party's new acquisitions set to be suspended.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson declared last Friday that her party would not be the face of the no vote in a referendum that could give Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people greater constitutional representation.

She said her campaign had snatched up 46 website domains, including five that closely match ulurustatement.org, a website address already used by First Nations Australians and supporters of a constitutionally recognised First Nations Voice.

The 'yes' campaign is ill-defined and ill-prepared, not even having the foresight to register the domain names we will use to good effect, Ms Hanson said.

Some of these websites, registered in bulk by Pauline Hanson's One Nation and One Nation's Queensland division, included voicetoparliament.org. The practice of registering multiple domain names is known as cyber-squatting and can be used to maximize search engine traffic.

One Nation's endeavour has fallen foul of the entity responsible for licensing Australian domains, the au Domain Administration auDA The domain licence administrator, made aware of the websites after the ABC discovered 37 domains that appeared to be registered to One Nation, and will suspend several of One Nation's domains containing a au address.

It is not known how many domains will be taken down but auDA policy stipulates that entities must have a close and substantial connection to their registered au domain name. The domain must match the name they are known by or a service they offer.

An auDA spokeswoman said that the rules contain strict criteria that people must meet to hold their domain name.

A au domain name can be suspended or cancelled by auDA if registrants are found not to have met the requirements of the au licensing rules. The ABC was able to locate 23 domains linked to One Nation's opposition to a Voice to Parliament with a au address.

It found another 14 with their ownership details redacted, but domain records showed that they were registered with a Queensland entity at almost the same time as the others on August 2 and shared similar website address names.

None of the domains had active websites.

After being told about auDA's decision to review the au domains, One Nation registered several new businesses with names matching their suspended websites.

These included the Uluru Statement, Voice to Parliament, and several variations of no to voice. The newly acquired business names could satisfy auDa policy about entities with close and substantial connections to their website names.

Senator Hanson has previously likened a proposed Voice to Parliament to apartheid in South Africa, a system of institutionalized racism that denied non-white South Africans civil rights.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who warned that scare campaigns would plague the referendum, said that the Voice would not supersede parliament.

In order to break with what I call 'the tyranny of powerlessness' that First Nations people have suffered from more than 121 years of the Commonwealth making decisions in Canberra without regard and without consultation with First Nations people themselves, Mr Albanese said last month.