Slashdot Mirror
Australian Prime-Minister Sends Spam
Boricle writes "The Australian Prime Minister has been personally funding the sending of political spam to the members of his electorate. The spam has been sent under contract by his son's company of whom he is 'very proud.' Political Spam is permitted under Australian Spam Legislation."
I'm interesting in HOW he's able to do this. I mean, is it a clause that SOLELY allows political spam, or is he exploiting a loophole, as a previous poster pointed out, about pre-existing business relationships. If the former is true, then its very amusing how these politicans make "backdoors" for themselves in law.
One of the candidates in John Howard's electorate (the Australian version of a Congressional district) is former chairman of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk Email, Troy Rollo, who is not happy, John
"I'm very proud of the fact that my son has started a small business in his 20s and I get a real buzz out of the fact that he's prepared to have a go in small business," Mr Howard said.
"That is what the future of this country is all about."
This from a man who has made it harder than ever in the history of this country to start and run small business through legislation, taxes, and new paperwork requirements.
In addition he has announced tax cuts for the middle to higher income earners and no help at all for lower income earners. Small business in Australia is treated like nothing, even though close to half of Australia's economy runs on the back of it.
The average small business owner is crushed by the weight of ever increasing government reporting requirements and he thinks that small business is the future of the country.
Yeah, right...
"And then I visited Wikipedia
The relationship is with the government, not the prime-minister or the party. The prime minister is yet another citizen, who (is supposed to) pay taxes as well.
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I wonder how many votes this gained him vs. votes lost...
the people who sell stuff by spam (generally) don't suffer much of a negative effect - some people buy from them, everyone else ignores it. the same can't be said of a politician because it seems likely that whilest he will gain some votes through this campaign, he will also lose a lot more from the people he pissed off.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
because a political organization has contrated a 3rd party to send spam, the 3rd party may not be exempt from the anti-spam laws as the contractor is not a political org. I hope they wipe the floor with these people.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Give him a chance. Howard is a failure, and Latham is an unknown quantity, but Howard is a know failure with no hope of redemption, and Latham may surprise us.
So known bads are worse than unknow potential bads.
Fuck, still clear as mud.
Political Spam is permitted under Australian Spam Legislation.
Sounds like the perfect setup for a legal Joe Job...
I should email everyone on the planet about this upcoming presidential election. If I can piss enough of the opposition off, my guy will have it in the bag!
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
...is go and check out the site of the small business owned by the son of the very proud father
http://netharbour.com.au/ (Net Harbour)
They seem to be using the trademarks of their competitors in their metadata too!
Have our betters no morals???
nick
Just when email started to come up, a minister sent out SPAM. He did it in such a amateuristic way (he included a picture of himself,... in BMP format) that he made a complete fool of himself. Since then , nobody tried again.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Oh, there's a backdoor all right. The government passed a law that made it illegal for companies to spam, but not political parties or charities.
So the Prime Minister is allowed to spam. However, in this case, he hired a company to spam for him -- so it might be illegal. That's why the Opposition is calling for an inquiry.
Here is the original report, by the way -- the one linked to by the Slashdot story just reports what this one said.
And you might be interested to know that this is the company that did the spamming.
I should buy some cement.
John Howard has shown through example he is very capable of leading this country.
Yeah, right up gee dubya's ass.
nick
He also claims it was "Howard money" that paid for it, So he did it as a citizen not the PM. Great, our PM is a dipshit spammer :(
The exemption from Anti-spam laws is for political parties. John Howard has repeatedly said that he paid for the spam out of his own pocket, and he's not a political party. I hope somebody who received the spam reports him based on this technicality, because it sure would be funny for him and his son (and his son is also not a political party) to receive fines of ONE! MILLION! DOLLARS!.
This is not a partisan political comment, I just don't like spam. Can I get my email with a little bit less spam in it please? A high-profile spamming conviction (and how much higher profile can we get than the Prime Minister) might help to reduce the spam burden.
Also, let's not forget that spam is unsolicited bulk email, and SPAM is Hormel's trademark for their delicious spiced-meat product.
If political spam is, well not allowed, but actually done as a service by the elections officials as a means to allow registered candidates to, for free, reach registered voters who have not opted out of their communications, I think it can be a good thing.
The great flaw in the political system is how candidates must raise money to buy advertising to push their messages at voters indiscriminately. Mostly TV. We've built a vastly more efficient medium on the internet for doing that. If we can reform campaign finance for real with the internet it could be the biggest thing we do with it.
More details in this blog entry on political spam
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
So all I do is create the "Increase Your P3n1s Size Party", send out "political messages", and only have the cost of a few election deposits every four or five years?
A similar thing has been done before in the UK - an anti-abortion group had some people stand as candidates in an election. They had no intention of winning, or even gaining any votes. What they wanted was to get their adverts on TV for relatively minimum outlay, thinly disguised as "party political broadcast"
I have started my own political party. I have 16 members. I do not have the money to buy traditional media exposure, so very few people are likely to hear about my party.
With all that, I still REFUSE to spam Australians to let them know the party exists, and if I catch one of our members doing it I'll do my best to revoke their membership (a democratic process - I cannot arbitrarily revoke a membership myself).
Spam is the scourge of the internet and there is no good reason for ANYONE to send unsolicited email in the hopes of getting something in return (be it donations for a charity, political stuff or anything else currently covered by loopholes).
Feel free to discuss this in our forum if you like - we're open to all and welcome all input, for or against any subject. See sig for more.
Visceral Psyche Films
How the politicians seem to exempt themselves from any laws that might effect their ability to beg for campain funds or votes? In the US they are exempt from the Do Not Call List.
Maybe it's time to elect amatures to all political offices. Look where the professionals have got us.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.