Shaun, your question goes to the heart of the "real" issues in DNS governance
in Australia (and worldwide).

Generics have large superficial attractions (mainly relating to the persuit
of income, creation of wealth, value in cash terms) and equally large problems
of scaling, and fairness, to say nothing of social equity and appropriateness.

I do not think we as a group, or any DNS governance process can derive a 
method that you will like in this area. To be more explicit, I can see no
reason why you should secure a generic domain name like this. I would expect
that any viable process would include suitable review and cooling off periods
such that you'd find a wider community of interest existed than just yourself.

The Internet doesn't owe you a living. I suspect the Furniture manufacturers
of Australia, the Furniture makers of Australia, and other Furniture retailers
of Australia have equally compelling, if not better reasons to claim legitemate
ownership of this (and many similar) domain names.

Your rights to furniture.<somedomain>.com.au are much more plausibly argued
with that <somedomain> owner. 

To make my own political agenda clearer, if either the DNA or its delegate for 
com.au derived income from releasing generics, I would personally hope that
around 100% of it went back into wider community funding, or even just TAX.

As has been said many times before

	the DNS is not a search engine

cheers
	-George
--
George Michaelson         |  DSTC Pty Ltd
Email: ggm&#167;dstc.edu.au    |  University of Qld 4072
Phone: +61 7 3365 4310    |  Australia
  Fax: +61 7 3365 4311    |  http://www.dstc.edu.au