I have discovered that someone with no connection to me has registered this blog’s old domain name, andrewnorton.net.au. I was forced to relinquish this address.

The site currently has some presumably AI written content and some copied old posts of mine.

I have commenced the steps needed to get this registration cancelled.

In the meantime, please do not visit andrewnorton.net.au.

Since 2011 I have run this blog using the andrewnorton.net.au url. But recently I was informed by my domain supplier that ‘net.au’ domains are now reserved for businesses with a connection to Australia.

To me ‘net.au’ sounds to me like a generic website address, with ‘.com.au’ for businesses. But I am years too late to challenge the decision and I don’t want to set up an andrewnorton.net.au business. I therefore need to change the blog url.

Although I have never previously heard of ‘id.au’ addresses, they seem like the best option to avoid a future reclassification. So I will be changing to andrewnorton.id.au

At the moment andrewnorton.id.au redirects to andrewnorton.net.au but I will reverse this soon. The redirection will last until andrewnorton.net.au expires on 2 July 2025. If you get a broken link changing the ‘net’ to ‘id’ will get you to the right place.

Once the change takes place, people reading my blog on a feed will probably need to resubscribe. There will be ongoing issues with broken links. I hope that there will be no interruption for people being notified of a new post by email.

Update: In August 2025 a scam site bought use of andrewnorton.net.au. I am trying to get it taken down.

For many years Jacques Chester has been generously providing technical support for this blog and several others. With a busy job in New York he is now transitioning us to a commercial host. This blog will be down for a while so that can occur.

Thanks Jacques!

Peter Chen has distributed results of the blog survey I promoted a few weeks ago.

He also sent me results for the people who came to my blog versus the other, mostly left-wing, blogs that participated in the survey. Predictably, my readers are more concerned about economic issues:

Do blog readers have different views about politics to ordinary voters?

Peter John Chen of the Department of Government at the University of Sydney is conducting a survey of blog readers, with some overlapping questions with the Australian Election Study.

The survey is open to readers of the blog who live in Australia. It will be used in a forthcoming (2012) book on the internet and Australia.

The survey will take only 10 minutes, and all responses are anonymous and confidential.

The survey can be found here.

You can have results sent to you if decide to leave an email. Otherwise, I will report them when they are available.

My former CIS colleagues are now blogging.

This is my new blog, still in development but the site of my blogging while I am at the Grattan Institute.

The reasons for the switch are explained here.