“During the recent federal election campaign, the ALP web site had over 1.6 million visits “, Senator Kate Lundy revealed today at a forum of party colleagues in Canberra.
“The ALP experienced an ‘order of magnitude’ increase in the number of times people visited the party’s web page, peaking at 100,000 visits the day Kim Beazley officially launched our campaign.
“In addition to up-to-date news and policy documents, the ALP web site offered many innovative features, including
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‘Howard’s End’, an electronic game that at peak times was being down-loaded every three minutes;
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‘e-grams’ – personalised electronic cards featuring messages about the negative impact of a GST sent via email;
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banner adds that allowed supporters of the party to ‘link’ their web page to the ALP web page via an animated advertisement;
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detailed candidate information, electorate maps and the respective ALP ‘how to vote’ cards.
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ALPTV, featuring the campaign launch which was ‘streamed’ live to the internet.
In recognition of high quality and innovative features, the site has won the ‘Best of Asia Pacific‘ Award for political sites in 1998.
Gary Gray, ALP National Secretary and campaign director said: “The quantity of policy information downloaded from the web site demonstrated the convenience of the online service. At one point the ALP’s ‘Plan for the Nation’ was being downloaded at a rate of 45 per hour.
“The web page also generated a lot of direct dialogue with voters by facilitating e-mail enquiries to the ALP National Office about policies and current political issues from members of the public
Senator Lundy, who is also Shadow Minister Assisting on Information Technology referred to recent ABS figures showing impressive growth in internet connectivity:
“Equity of access to the internet is a priority for the ALP. The role our web page has played in making our policies easily accessible to online citizens is something we are very proud of, but we are also conscious of the fact that the majority of Australians have never accessed the internet.
“The barriers to internet access, of which cost is still the largest, must be removed if on-line democratic participation, or ‘cyber-democracy’ is to find a meaningful place in Australian politics”, Senator Lundy concluded.
Contact Simon Tatz on (02) 62773334
