In the light of the current debate about political parties having exempted themselves from any requirement to safeguard the privacy of any individuals they deal with, I cast a critical eye over a “Community News” from Kate Lundy last week. It includes a “no postage required” response form that looks at face value to be a reasonable sort of thing: add your voice etc. However, on thinking about it, it looks like an “audience segmentation” exercise aimed at allowing the ALP to carefully target individuals ahead of the next election.
It is asking for my home address and my email address – when dealing with a business of course, there would be strict requirements as to what they do with that information.
It nominates three options to tick:
1. Yes, I support a price on carbon pollution;
2. I have concerns that I need addressed; and
3. I do not support action on climate change or a price on carbon pollution
The first is actually the least relevant to the ALP; they can get a sound indication re community support on the issue from standard polling.
It’s the second two that they are interested in. Folk who nominate the second will be, of course, sans privacy requirements, be segmented into a “high communication” category and the ALP will go all out to target them and attempt to persuade them into the fold.
They’re also very interested to segment the non-supporters; they are (by name and address and email) added to a list of “don’t bother to engage”. That means that any correspondence FROM that category of people will be matched to their phone number, address or email, and discounted altogether, so that Kate, Andrew Leigh and Gai Brodtmann can focus their attention where they believe they have a chance.
All in all, unless you want to be spammed hard ahead of the next election (and the three signatories are certainly concerned, “safe Labor ACT” notwithstanding) it would be safest to send your opinion through to them via freepost WITHOUT identifying yourself. And consider supporting any independents who are prepared to lobby against the aforementioned exemption from privacy laws.
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