I find the medium of email the greatest thing since sliced bread. Others do not!

Political minders aka ministerial staffers I feel are very remiss in their handling of email input. There are programs which give thwe recipient the opportunity to preview incoming email before it is actually downloaded from the ISP, indeed some ISP's provide the preview facility. The minders thus have the chance to preview and delete anything that they consider their Minister would not be interested in. Problem. If I send an intelligent email enquiry to a polly, with name and address supplied and an electronic receipt requested, that is as time consuming as writing a memorandum. It lacks a postage stamp and a signature.

If some bloody minder decides to delete this at the preview stage, I get back a note as there is no electronic receipt, that says 'your message was deleted unread at *****(date time).' What confidence this inspires in the breast of the elector. Treated like a bit of tret. When I was a public servant in the Canberra scene many years before email there was a standard approach to communication. A visit deserved a return visit, a memo deserved a return memo, a phone call for a phone call (with record of conversation), and the same thing should apply to an email!

If I printed out my email, signed it, spent 50c. to get it there by snail mail, it would involve registry staff, internal delivery staff, still a minder or two, probably not a push up to the boss unless it was really serious and intelligent, then I would get a formal reply from someone who would respond at say $60,000pa. man hour rate, typist, stationery, signing after perusal by another authoritarian figure, mail pick up, registery action and in a month or so I would get a wonderful response.

Surely, realising that there are those who use email anonomously to slang and abuse because they haven't the guts to stand and be counted, surely when an elector uses email and provides his personals as evidence of good intent, he deserves better treatment than to be 'deleted as unread' by some bloody minder. I have addressed this problem to the webmaster at APH with nil response. Any suggestions or corroborative comment would be of interest.