I very much support this policy. A policy should not be retrospectively applied otherwise anything any of us may do or plan to do can be considered guaranteed, and I would see a case for requesting APNIC to return funds for any services provided that have been negated by policy changes.
I also very much object to the 5 year period that snuck in at the last APNIC meeting. I was happy with 2 years, but 5 years is unreasonable.
I was going to make a submission to change this back to 2 years, but unfortunately, work got in the way and I did not get the submission in on time. Next meeting maybe.