November 29, 2007 | Graham

When is Rudd going to reinstate the Prime Minister’s site?



Go to this page. Depending on how long after you read this it may show something different. At the moment it gives this message:

An election for the House of Representatives was held on 24 November 2007 at which the Coalition Government led by the Prime Minister, the Hon John Howard MP, was defeated.
A new Government led by the Leader of the Australian Labor Party, Mr Kevin Rudd MP, is expected to be sworn in by the Governor-General in the near future. In the interim, media content is available on Mr Rudd’s website. Any comments or messages to Mr Rudd can be made through the following form – Contact the Federal Labor Leader, Mr Kevin Rudd MP.
Mr Howard will remain the caretaker Prime Minister until the new Ministry is sworn in. Until this time any comments or messages to Mr Howard can be made through the following form – Contact the Hon John Howard MP.
Archived material from the former Prime Minister’s website is available on the National Library of Australia Pandora archive.

That’s not good enough. This may be the first federal change of government in the Internet era, but the sites should be left alone so that we normal mortals can do research. At the moment I can’t easily find out anything about the previous government’s official position on education funding. Sure, I can go to Pandora, but you try navigating it!



Posted by Graham at 9:15 pm | Comments (4) |
Filed under: Australian Politics

4 Comments

  1. Just go to the current site for the Dept of Education – http://www.dest.gov.au/
    At this stage the content hasn’t been changed yet.

    Comment by Matt_I — November 30, 2007 @ 11:02 am

  2. Graham
    I was quite surprised to find this while I was looking for something else yesterday:
    [Extract from page]http://www.anra.gov.au/index.html
    Caretaker notice
    An election for the House of Representatives was held on 24 November 2007 at which a new government was elected.
    The new government should be sworn in by the Governor-General in the near future. Until then, the Government will remain in caretaker mode.
    Content on this web site is under review until further notice.
    Text about the Atlas and what you’ll find here.
    [end of extract]
    I’m really not quite sure why a description of natural resources has political content!
    I could be political myself and observe that possibly the people who ordered that notice had something to hide, but what?

    Comment by Lesley de Voil — November 30, 2007 @ 3:56 pm

  3. Thanks Matt. I found the material in the Google cache. Lesley, not sure what your point is. This page was put up after the election, but before a new government has been appointed. Someone, somewhere has jumped the gun. And it’s not appropriate that this material be made redundant and difficult to access holus bolus.

    Comment by Graham Young — November 30, 2007 @ 4:59 pm

  4. Website should go back online once AEC formally declares the election and the Governor-General swears in the new Prime Minister and Cabinet.
    So should be back up sometime on Monday.

    Comment by Petering Time — December 2, 2007 @ 10:50 am

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