RE: Australian electoral laws
Gregson, Jeremy (Jeremy.Gregson@dofa.gov.au)
Thu, 1 Oct 1998 16:47:01 +1000
The rulings for what can and can't be added to websites during the
election period are pretty firmly spelt out by the Department of Prime
Minister and Cabinet at http://www.dpmc.gov.au/caretake.htm, which
details all of the "caretaker conventions", the rules by which the
federal public service is expected to play during the election period.
What must be a new addition to the conventions for this election is the
material they've included as Attachment C, which details what is or
isn't appropriate use of departmental resources. Even when there isn't
an election on, the public service guidelines would rule out using
public resources for party political purposes, of course...
The conventions were circulated to all Departmental Secretaries by snail
mail as soon as the election was called, and put up on the PM&C website
about the same time. A few days later, we circulated an email to
webmasters of the portfolio departments (who are the most affected) from
the fed.gov.au entry point, to make sure that the word had filtered out
to as many people as possible.
Jeremy Gregson
AusInfo