Senator Andrew Bartlett
Friday, August 19, 2005
 
Emailing politicians - expressing views or just spam?
I've noticed some debate on a couple of blogs about the wisdom or otherwise of the approach on the new GetUp! Website which (in part) seeks to use email campaigns to politicians. This is the new equivalent of the old style form letter, where people got photocopies of a letter and wrote their name and address on it and sent it in.

Liberal MP Andrew Robb called these emails "spam". Leaving aside the fact that the Liberals used spam emails themselves to campaign during the last election, in technical terms, he is wrong. Spam is automatic computer generated emails. These are emails sent consciously by a person who agrees with its content and types in their address and presses a button to prove it (as opposed to the old approach of writing their name on a piece of paper, putting it in an envelope and posting it).

However, even making allowances for Robb's desire to discredit an attempt at progressive campaigning, it is worth considering what the response of most politicians might be to a wave of electronic form letters. I know many MPs genuinely think of email 'campaigns' as basically equivalent to spam. I think this is silly but I guess it says something about the different way many people perceive communication by email compared to letters and phone calls. That said, I've known MPs who thought that any time they got a heap of phone calls or letters from people complaining about their actions or views, it was the result of an organised campaign by their political opponents. I guess I shouldn’t give examples, but when people who do something hugely unpopular can then just dismiss all the complaints they receive as being part of an orchestrated campaign by their opponents, it makes you wonder how to get them to acknowledge any critical feedback.

ACOSS is doing something reasonably similar on their site with their Action Network. This enables people to send a form letter via email expressing concern about the proposed welfare changes. It is preset so it goes to your local Member, and can also be sent to your Senators as well (although you have to tick a box to add this option). So far, I've received about 320 of them. I think this is fine and reasonable – people are sending me their views and I get a chance to tell them what I think about it. In some ways it's much easier than individual emails, as I can send the same response to everyone, which requires a lot less thought and time than individually tailoring a response. However, I know others think differently.

I must say I support any attempts to increase public involvement in issues that affect them and to improve information flows between politicians and the public. It will be interesting to see how GetUp goes. It is obviously based on models from the USA and our system does have significant differences, but it's worth trying out.

A long time ago I wrote a few basic thoughts on how you might improve your chances of getting your emails to politicians noticed. Emails that attempt to be individually tailored can still have their problems. I recently got an email about industrial relations which started by saying "as someone who votes for your party, I am appalled at your position". Unfortunately, the person had sent it to 8 different Senators from 4 different parties, which did make me wonder about the accuracy of his assertion.

When you get an email addressed to a whole range of Senators, you tend to wonder about the worth of replying, especially if you don't know which state they are from. However, I got this response today from someone:
"You are the only politician across all the parties both federal and state that has shown the decency to reply to my letter. I had written to five politicians and had all but written off any chance of reply. You may not realise how overjoyed I was to receive your reply."
Now it's quite possible that this guy was just pissing in my pocket and sent the same thing to everyone else who replied, but even if he was, he took the time to piss in my pocket, which is almost as good as a genuine response. It is a good encouragement to do better with responding to emails, as I do have a bad habit of allowing a pool of old emails to gather at the bottom of my Inbox.


PS Speaking of emails, just as I was about to post this, I received one responding to the news story about the word "mate" being banned from use by Parliamentary staff. Thought I'd share it with you all.
You f**kers are so OUTTA control it's ridiculous!! And you're so OUTTA touch with Australians it's TREASONOUS. Bring on the trials dirtbags!! You mutts will face justice for your theft, fraud, offences against human rights and downright stupidity. It IS an offence to be a politician and so DUMB.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, August 19, 2005 Permalink
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