How far behind the US are Australian political parties when it comes to using the Internet for campaigning? Light years it would appear. If there is a major political party in Australia that really “gets” the Internet, I have yet to see them.

Case in point - the NSW State election which is currently underway. You can see that both the major parties have made more of an effort this year to try and use the Internet effectively, but both continue to make major mistakes.

Morris Iemma

www.morrisiemma.com.au

Blog

• There isn’t one.

 

A chance to really connect directly with the electorate has been missed here.

Video

• Points for at least putting some video up there
• The audio starts before I choose to click on the play button, which is generally frowned upon
• The video itself is high production, “talk to camera” pieces that are overdone and unlikely to convince anyone to even watch to the end of the video.
• There is no way to broadcast the videos out via a distributed network

 

Which videos allow me to see the real Morris, or even allow me to see what others think about him?

Content

• Policy is hidden within PDF documents

 

Not only does it make it more difficult for search engines to pick up your content, but it makes it more difficult for people to read it. It effectively says, “There are more important things on this site than our policy”.

Peter Debnam

www.peterdebnam.com.au

Design

• Is there a designer in Australia that would put their name to this site?

 

The site may have started out with a restricted colour palette and an appropriate hierarchy, but in the hurly-burly of electioneering it has been lost for good.

Blog

• Bonus points for having a blog at all (good start)
• Extra bonus points for putting the blog content right smack on the home page
• Lost points for the content. The content appears to be just re-wording of media releases.
• Credit for allowing comments, but you lost me when you disassociated yourself from them and put them over on the Daily Telegraph instead.

 

Domain-squatting and Ordinary Viral

• Check out www.morrisiemma.com for some poor viral.

 

I guess we should take points off Morris and his team for not snapping up the domain name in the first place?

There is so much more that is wrong with political campaigning on the Internet in Australia, and this post was inspired by my utter frustration at how ordinary most of it is. Hell - I don’t even live in NSW!

Want to know how to do it properly? Try www.barackobama.com.

• High quality design that emphasizes the important elements
• Good quality videos that are actually interesting to watch (as opposed to re-hashing TV commercials). Videos of actual supporters talking on the street about their support for Barack.
• A full on social network that allows people to get involved and take part in the conversation
• Comments on the blog

 

There is no reason we cannot do the same or better in Australia.