As I wrote in my last entry, the Australian government requests that all non-government organisations seek permission in order to link to austalia.gov.au. I thought that was ridiculous, so I sent them a request:

Sent: Thursday, 31 August 2006 8:03 PM
To: Australia Gov
Subject: Australia.gov.au General Inquiry

Request permission to link to australia.gov.au from a non-government organisation

Howdy,
According to http://www.australia.gov.au/about-this-site non-government websites are required to obtain a permission from Australia.gov.au Manager in order to link to the australia.gov.au site.

I hereby request a permission to link to australia.gov.au from my site (http://finnmetal.com/blog).

I understand that by linking to australia.gov.au I must not contravene government policy, use australia.gov.au solely for commercial practices or imply that the Australian Government endorses the website or product.

Sincerely,
Lauri Rantala, FinnMetal.com

I had also sent requests to Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic and other big companies, which all demand that you seek permission prior to establishing a link to their site, but never heard from them. So why do these companies make such demands, if they are never even going to handle your request? Tero Tilus explains: “Why not spray a website with demands if there is not going to be any consequences?”.

I was therefore surprised to actually receive a response from the Australian government:

Hello

Thank you for forwarding your inquiry to www.australia.gov.au.

Yes, you have permission to link to www.australia.gov.au. Please adhere to our linking policy – http://www.australia.gov.au/about-this-site#linking.

Regards
Kathy

Awesome! I may now place a government approved link to australia.gov.au! Ain’t that something. So here goes:
– The government of Australia, Govenment approved link.

That was so cool, I’m going to start collecting government approved links on my website