Competition To Find Aussie PM's Email Address

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Competition To Find Aussie PM's Email Address

Posted by timothy on Sunday January 19, 2003 @09:38PM from the why-not-ask-some-spammers dept.

Internet Ninja writes "While we can all send anti-war emails to 'president' of the USA and even the Australian opposition, nobody can email the Prime Minister of Australia. So the opposition party started a competition to track it down as reported in Australias Sydney Morning Herald."

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publicity stunt by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-19 21:50 · Score: 5, Insightful

this is a pretty funny publicity stunt.

as the labor party is well aware, federal politician's email addresses are pseudonyms and changed quickly if they fall into the 'wrong hands'.

furthermore all senior federal politicians have access to the other email addresses, so the labor party already has johnny's email address.
Re:NO SUBJECT! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-01-19 21:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

Ya, email will stop America from doing what needs to be done.

Considering America has shown no intention of doing what actually needs to be done (renouncing terrorism and stopping the arming and funding of terrorism would be a good start) how can anything, including email, stop them?
Instead the US prefers to send another few billion in the direction of the biggest terrorist mob in the Middle East.
Re:Is It Just Me... by alister · 2003-01-19 22:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

Mate.
I hope you're not suggesting that:
a) Australians can't be nerds or geeks
b) that finding little Johnny's email address isn't a valid exercise for said nerds and geeks
Maybe there are just a lot of us around. And, after all, where does Samba come from?
Alister
Re:Is It Just Me... by tenjah · 2003-01-19 22:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yes, well, perhaps you haven't quite yet worked out that the INTERNET is an INTERNATIONAL medium, and that what with AUSTRALIA being a COUNTRY in the WORLD then you are very likely to have stories concerning it.

Particularly more so than the somewhat less "developed" countries such as Khazakstan, Guatemala, and Bangladesh where little tech news/discoveries/events are happening..

I'm guessing you are an american right? Too bad, but I have no axe to grind. I aint an Aussie either, but it's people like you who make this Americans annoyed by all this international shit on the internet report all the funnier.

Anyone noticed the amount of american stories appearing on /. recently? Give me a break son.

Oh, and the relevancy of the story to readers is inherent to the competition to discover the PM of Australia's email addre....ahh...forget it
Re:Australians reaping what they sowed by Tyreth · 2003-01-19 22:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

The difference is Australians don't pretend that they are some Righteous God-Fearing nation that is the Light of the World, and represents the Forces of Good against the hordes of evil.
Australians have no problem (well, I don't) in admitting their faults, and have no motivation to pretend that they are holy or righteous when in fact they aren't.
Ok, what ithe heck by Sycraft-fu · 2003-01-19 23:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

is with the quotes around president? Yes people, George Bush is the president of the United States. You may not like him or agree with his politics, you may even think he's a moron, that's fine you aren't alone. He is, however, the president and of that there is no debate.
1. Re:Ok, what ithe heck by nagora · 2003-01-20 00:54 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  there was no election for PM.
  Which is fair enough in a party system. The US system doen't fill me with excitement at the idea of having a separate election. If we'd don it that way then Thatcher would have stayed in power for ANOTHER two years before we could kick her out. It makes no more sense to vote for PM than it would to vote for leader of the opposition or chancellor of the exchequer. They are all just cabinet posts and the pary can fill them as it sees fit.
  Labour leader ('elected' mostly by the unions)
  Labour leader is elected by the Labour MP's and Blair wouldn't get many union votes today if they did have any say in it.
  at least Americans had an election for President, where you could vote for or against Bush; Britain did not hold one in the first place!
  Why do you think this is a big deal? We voted (or not) for parties in the full knowledge of who their leaders were and those leaders were a substantial factor in the way people voted.
  TWW
  
  --
  "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
2. Re:Ok, what ithe heck by nagora · 2003-01-20 02:32 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I wonder, do Britons care very much about who their MPs are? Do they go to the polls thinking about how great Tony Blair is but hating the labor MP candidate for their district and vote for him anyway because he's labor and they want Blair for PM?
  It's wrong to generalise.
  But I'll do it anyway.
  I think most people here do vote on party lines although it might be truer to say that they vote on policy lines. If the party supports a policy they like then people will vote for it, especially if they think the leader of the party will push that policy. So, if the PM is kicked out by the party mid-term as happened to Thatcher, people might still be happy if the policies are still what they want (not in that particular case, however).
  In some places the individiual candidate matters, particularly in marginal seats, but the reality is that no one likes politicians and most of them are as dull as the next so it usually doesn't matter. The issue of who the leader of the party is very mixed. Currently Blair is pretty well hated but Labour are seen as better than the other options while the Labour MPs themselves can't decide if the bloodbath unleased by giving him the boot would leave them in power and none of them want to start the experiment. Iraq is the first time I've seen Blair under any real pressure from public opinion but, again, there are no obvious alternatives in the other parties so I doubt that he'll have any trouble joining in the attack when the time comes.
  My guess would be that given the strength of the parties in Britain your individual MP wouldn't matter all that much, since they're almost always vote the party line which is mostly directed by the PM.
  This is quite true of all the parties, not just the governing one that the PM belongs to: each party has its "whips" which tell the sheep, er...MPs how to vote. The whips have a lot of power since being dropped by the party at the next election for being a trouble maker is normally a one-way ticket to palookaville (sp?) since the voters will just vote for your faceless replacement. Again, there are a few exceptions but they are very, very rare indeed.
  many people deliberately split their vote between President and congress
  It is worth noting that the PM has very reduced powers compared to the President so this doesn't make as much sense over here; there's no real way in which the PM's power needs to be balanced by putting a different party in opposition to it. There are more differences in the two systems than most PMs would like, I think.
  TWW
  
  --
  "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Re:Email him here by DJPenguin · 2003-01-19 23:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

So if he had an email address, that would definately be read by him?

Do you really think that when you email Mr. Bush at the white house, that little voice says "You've got mail" and he turns round in his chair to click on it?

I'm sure whitehouse.gov email gets read and responded to by secretaries too.
You are wrong by Cpt_Corelli · 2003-01-20 00:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why email Saddam Hussein? If you have followed recent news you will find that it is the US that is about to invade Iraq, not the other way around.

I bet that the coming US invasion of Iraq will end up in this list pretty soon...
Linux.conf.au by Dnigh · 2003-01-20 00:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

Considering Linux Conf.au kicked off today, maby the Labour Council is just looking to give geeks something to do between presentations ?

Seriously though, this is just a cheap publicity stunt for the Labour Council and should be treated as such.
Try pm@pm.gov.au by Skevos+Mavros · 2003-01-20 00:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

j.howard.mp@aph.gov.au might be the correct address, but I would guess it just forwards to whoever is looking after whatever Mr Howard's portfolio was at that time (you didn't give a date to the usenet posting).

A little birdy told me (I briefly worked in the Australian Federal Public Service a long time ago, and I have a few friends that still do) to try pm@pm.gov.au instead. Though I'm betting it forwards to the same place that web site form seems to go to - webmaster@pm.gov.au.

Anyway, I don't really see the point of this "competition", even from a publicity stunt point of view. No one REALLY thinks that the Australian PM (or the US President or the French President etc) sits at his desk each morning, opens up Outlook/KMail/whatever and checks his incoming email, do they?

Maybe they think the PM opens all his own mail too. And that he really does write every word of every document that has his signature on it...