By Alex Schlotzer:

As the latest Newspoll shows further primary support being drawn away from the major parties to the Greens, political editor Alex Schlotzer takes a look at how the electoral battle is being fought online.

Australia’s main political parties, the Labor Party, the Liberalsand the Greens, have all just recently launched new websites with unconfirmed rumours the Labor Party is about to re-launch with additional “community” features.  Yet only in the last week, the Labor Party has started to come under fire for sponsoring and endorsing a Twitter account called Phoney_Tony , designed to heckle Tony Abbott.  I’ve commented in the past, and just recently, about the approach Australia’s political parties take to using the Internet and engaging with social media. While online electioneering is here to stay in Australia, I don’t believe it will be the Web 2.0 election as some pundits are predicting.

This kind of engagement can only make things more difficult for the ALP, and not seen as something funny or worthwhile.  It could also encounter significant backlash from Twitter users as they tend to be repelled by this kind of behaviour.

However, while this is taking place the Liberals launched their website quietly.  They have attempted to appear to be interactive but fail to provide any interactivity for non-members.  Supporters would find it difficult participating without first becoming a party member.  While there are merits to this approach to keep out trolls, it means that you are still only preaching to the converted and not widening or deepening the level of interaction with new and potential supporters, voters and members.

The Greens only just (within last 3 days) launched their new website. It offers more functionality and enables a basic level of interaction without forcing someone to become a party member.  However, more significant involvement requires party membership.  Even a basic level of interactivity is better than what’s on offer from ALP and Liberals.

The online electioneering is really beginning to kick off as the main parties embrace the technology.  In my opinion, the Greens are the political party best using social media to date, with the exception of stand-outs individuals like Kristina Keneally.

But the gloves are definitely off when it comes to online electioneering, even if it won’t be the web2.0 election.

This article was originally published at Alex’s blog.

Alex Schlotzer is a straight talker when it comes to politics and loves to vent his spleen. Actively involved in Australian and international politics with a keen understanding of the dynamics of the political machine, Alex has a prolific online presence and has been a cyber activist for over 15 years. Regional editor of theangle.org, he can also be found at his blog and his exciting online project Australian Politics TV.

Tags: australian election, facebook election, Greens, labor, liberals, twitter election, web 2.0