This is a bit off the main subject of this blog, but politicians seem to be almost the ones who have least realised how much the world has changed in the last 25 years of so – those who are supposed to be in the business of representing the people, and addressing their concerns.
They always make it as difficult as they possibly can to send emails to them, or, if you can email them, they are likely to respond with automated responses along the lines of, “Oh dear! I’m getting SO SO many emails, and, of course, I have to give preference to emails that come from people in my electorate, but I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” and you never hear from them again.
In our experience, and that of our readers, this is exactly how Ken Wyatt responded to emails sent to him when he was the Commonwealth Assistant Minister for Health. And we have no doubt that this is exactly how David Gillespie would handle emails sent to him, now that he has taken over this job – although, to be honest, we haven’t got time to check. (Perhaps some of our readers could send some emails to him and let us all know how they got on.)
But the classical example of what we’re talking about is Geoff Lee, the State Member for Parramatta, who we could quite imagine has never responded to a email from one of his constituents in his life – all he does every couple of months is send his constituents an expensively put together brochure showing about 15 photos of himself in various photo opportunities doing this and that. To be fair to Geoff, he may be finding that that’s all he has to do to keep getting increased majorities. And, if that’s the case, those who vote for him are to blame.
It’s going to be such a different world when those most likely to be elected to our parliaments are those who are seen as the most likely to address the concerns people set out in emails sent to them – a world we believe will eventually and inevitably come about, hopefully sooner rather than later.