Ah, so DNS is not working. you are getting failures when doing host lookups. But, minnie.tuhs.org is probably in your /etc/hosts file (it is in mine).
To summarise:
  • you can connect to a host on port 8000 if you provide the IP address.
  • You cannot connect to the same host on port 80.
  • You cannot resolve hostnames via DNS


Can you try the following (this is the same test as before, but using ip addresses rather that host names):

www.abc.net.au:
Code:
wget -v -t 1 http://202.6.74.88
www.abc.net.au via proxy.netspace.net.au
Code:
http_proxy=http://210.15.254.253:8080 wget -v -t1 http://202.6.74.88
minnie.tuhs.org via proxy.netspace.net.au
Code:
http_proxy=http://210.15.254.253:8080 wget -v -t1 http://131.244.9.101