UK Dissertation

Peter Phelps
Posted Thursday, 17 December 2009 at 10:58 am | Permalink
“You see, once your letter stops being a standard rant about filtering and requires actual work, the amount of time taken to prepare a response can snowball dramatically.”

Nope, no cigar. A decent office will have ‘standard’ paragraphs on w wide range of issues which they’ll just cut and paste into a document, or they’ll agglomerate different ‘standard’ letter letters into a sinlgle letter with trite conjunctions.

I’ve used to write ministerials and more recently used this knowledge to wrote to ministers on a range of issues to actually effect change as an individual, citizen, or voter without using a lobbyist or any particular NGO etc as a front.

I’ve never heard of software that lets you drop in stock paras, although you could write a VBA solution yourself in Word (or commission one from the IT area) with some custom forms and dialog boxes to do this without too much trouble, I guess — there are always a few programmers floating around in govt who occasionally get tasked to do things like this — but such a solution is mainly intended to save time for officers, and doesn’t materially change the way ministerials are written — and such software solutions can often be clunky also.

Very often, though, public servants have stockpiled a whole pile of recent replies, often in a shared server area for common access, and simply re-use the paras out of there, changing them around a bit as necessary — more on this below.

Certainly also signature blocks and opens and closes etc are strongly mandated but they tend to be handcrafted with cut and paste from previous replies and according to the latest decreed standard for that Minister — still, the approach can be automated equally well if desired, if clunkily. Remember most public service offices are just using MS-Word like you or me, it’s not an artifiicially intelligent SkyNet.

Ministerial correspondence is supposed to be answered, and to a fairly strict deadline system, although there can be slippage and some discretion involved, depending on whether it’s one of a barrage of emails à la Conroy’s filter or a single letter with a single problem from a constituent or organisation that needs an answer.

When a ministerial letter is received from a source, it (mandatorily, I believe) should get an answer — with the exception of obvious letter writing campaigns — in the case of emails, if you supply a postal address in the note, you are more likely to get an answer, and it will be physically printed, signed and mailed to you — the physical address requirement is a bit of a game they like to play which kind of ensures that you are a real person and constituent and not some sort of spammer, I suppose. Occasionally you will also get email replies, depending on the nature of the letter you sent. Ministers who want to look Internet-savvy will often nowadays send an email reply to less essential mail they receive where there’s nothing at stake — which often results in a new barrage of email replies that they then have to ignore — unfortunately as we know email speeds correspondence up enormously, letting you quote and requote replies with value-adding comments in different colours etc which ratbags will take full advantage of.

Anyhow, if a ministerial is going to be processed and taken seriously, it goes into a processing stream with various deadlines implied, but will often get routed to a junior public servant who works in the specific area, possibly an APS5 or 6 or state equivalent, who does the grunt work of writing a reply, their manager reads the work makes any changes, and forwards it up for sign-off by the Minister who probably wouldn’t read it. However, you are assured of having an ‘expert’ reply from the dept where the Minister really wouldn’t have a clue.

In the case of Conroy’s filter, a lot of this correspondence effectively stops at a high level without delegation, however, as there is no low-level APS equipped to deal with the sentiments concerning policy in the letters, except possibly to produce a whole pile of stock answers kind of like a factory. I recently wrote somehing like Adsy’s to Conroy, but with different invective, and don’t care if I get an answer or not, to be honest — but I included a mailing address as a trick to potentially trigger a response.

For this reason, sending multiple letters all at once, all saying the same thing, to your local MP and the Minister and the PM and so on are frowned upon inside the dept as ‘poor form’, as the same branch and area ends up getting 3 or 4 letters all forwarded to them at around the same time from other ministers and with the same content and then they have to either produce 3-4 almost identical answers if they’re staggered or a single response and notify all the other ministers of having done so — it just creates a welter of extra work unnecessarily for a whole bunch of people in the respective loops. When NGOs do this sort of stunt, it is seen as really poor form and a rather naive attempt to be cunning, usually resulting in a direct phone call from the area manager or else a single written reply on behalf of all ministers petitioned.

If you write a sensible letter on an issue to an MP and get a reply which provides a Director’s phone number for further enquiries, this is your in — if you are really unsatisfied and want to make a point or take further action, you call the Director, and if you don’t get a good response, you call their Branch Manager or Assistant Secretary, or whatever — you just ask the switchboard of the dept once you have an original name, title, ph number and branch — I’ve done this in the past and gotten good results — perseverance pays off. The really funny thing once was where a new Director wasn’t interested in talking to a ‘member of the public’ and could only understand talking to ‘important people in NGOs’ whereupon I made strenuous efforts to have them removed or sacked as not having a clue about the charter of govt or their own role. That director has moved on and the function has been transferred to another dept since. All good fun.

Another letter I wrote suggested that the ROSO on the MRBS should be shortened for shorter Med courses, and got a response from the AS responsible and they have actually changed the scheme in line with that suggestion since — this was a narrow, specialised policy problem, not a ‘big ideas’, democratic sit-in, email barrage like the GetUp campaign on Conroy.

A spade is a spade unless it’s not. And mankind will always fail itself through violence, greed, selfishness and egotism till the bitter end.

I don’t give a rat’s if Conroy’s Army have not the ticker to take a highlighter, hand my letter to their boss and look him fair in the eye with a cocked brow. What’s more important is that we, the social massive, get out from behind our screens, stop tapping on keyboards and dance on the streets. (I got a swag of responses from Liberal MPs when I group mailed them on all issues Turnbull (who?) and ETS (say what?) but they now lack the ultra priggishness that power propagates).

For me, it’s not about opt-in, opt-out or mandatory. I’m on the Australian Direct Marketing Association’s “Do Not Call List” but I still get calls from telemarketers. I have enough life experience to know that lists are just that: lists! Able to be manipulated, ignored, mistaken or “incorrectly implemented due to singular data verification impairment” (that’s Ruddspeak for cock up).

Maybe Conroy should fund private enterprise and let consumers purchase filtration software if they so desire. This probably already exists but I’m unaware to it because I’m smart enough to eyeball my 6 year old’s internet habits and there’ll be no in room PCs or Notebooks until he and his younger brother are old enough to know better.

Above all else, for me, the issue at hand is that the world needs less draconian legislation to deal with such crimes as violence, sex crimes and anti-social behavior and less lenience from the courts with less wriggle room afforded to defense barristers. For the same reasons, in my opinion, that we need less policing of drug use and a total diversion of resources to fighting addiction, mental health and homelessness. Same goes for road laws, less speed cameras and highway patrols and stiffer fines and longer suspensions for wrong doers and habitual offenders. Imagine if all the highway patrol officers were driving community buses to move people who are unfit to drive through their own stupidity. Imagine if all the money paid to bureaucrats and geeks implementing this policy was spent on flying child victims to Disneyland and access to lifetime Medicare for psychologists.

I dunno, I am ranting now and it’s past midnight. My mouse will turn into a pumpkin any minute and whisked away by a staffer to throw in the oven for tomorrow’s roast at The Lodge.

Dear Senator Conroy,

First of all, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Second, have you figured out yet that the internet is sometimes used for other things than p-rn? Such as, just off the top of my head, democracy and free speech?
Think about it.

Yours truly
John F Citizen

If in a bad mood they’d fire their PAs for passing it to them to begin with. My guess is it would be filed ASAP into the WPB.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I wish I had written it. However, I do have one comment and one question.

Intellect, life experience=Senator Conroy???? (That’s the question)

People like Conroy and Kevin Rudd rely on the “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” type question-in this case child porn-to ram through a morally reprehensible law such as this. Naturally the short sighted amongst the electorate think there is only one morality-the kid porn. They ignore the equally immoral law that goes with it.

I urge to to reconsider your scandalous censorship legislation. This policy is an absurd and abusive appropriation public money. Filtering is to child porn content pushers what wire taps are to drug pushers. Offenders simply “change up”.

How could someone of your supposed intellect and life experience honestly believe this mandatory system will achieve any of it’s stated objectives? Would you mind elaborating on that? Prohibition does not work. Take a look at prohibitionist drug laws for example. You know and I know that at anytime any of us are MAXIMUM 2 degrees of separation from a cocaine or ecstasy or marijuana supply deal. Just as drug laws don’t work - a bunch of dudes in gaol networking and contracting HIV, Hep C and hired killers, all the while the drug trade continues to flourish.

Just as preposterous as alcohol prohibition would be. Alcohol, whilst not as morally reprehensible on a casual basic as sex crimes and unlike sex crimes a pastime to be enjoyed in moderation, is a far worse offender in terms of contributing to violence against women, violence full stop, horrible injury from car accidents and contributing considerable burden on the physical and mental health systems. You wouldn’t dream of censoring booze, would you Senator?

Child porn is abhorrent. Violence against women is abhorrent. Violence is abhorrent. Any form of abuse from one human being to another, no matter how seemingly innocuous to the perpetrator in their mind, is abhorrent.

The OFLC won’t even issue R18+ ratings for PC and Console gaming. Did you read that? NO R18+ RATINGS FOR PC GAMES. They are already filtering what the public can access on their PCs. I would never play such games myself, occasional golf is or some retro shooting game is as far as I dabble on my PS2. But I’m not ignorant or naive enough to seriously believe that banning certain violent games or internet content is going to (1) foster change in violent and anti-social behavior or (2) address the root causes and motivations for such behavior or (3) reduce the crime rate in the areas of concern. Censorship and prohibition are flawed and are no match of the, dare I say, evil and cunning instincts of mankind.

Tragically, people will do what they do. Other people chase down these people and sometimes catch them and incarcerate them for crimes against other people. Other than that, leave people alone and look after your own. This world was never meant to be a source of purity and eternal goodwill. Mankind is capable of the most horrific acts of violence, greed and malice in order to serve their own selfish immediate needs.

Censorship of the internet via proposed filtering will not change this one iota. It is an ineffective strategy and an arrogant misuse of public money, to put it politely. Take this policy to the election and see where it takes you politically. You certainly didn’t take it to the last election in its present form. I voted Labor at the last election as I wanted change. The world wants change. But leaders like Obama and Rudd are squandering opportunity by sinking their countries further and further into debt whilst implementing idealistic policies being thrust upon constituents in a frenzied fervor after years in the political wilderness.

Do not take the public for granted for they will burn you at the electoral stake should you even give rise to the even most remote notion that governments may impinge on their access to media based on its own subjective moral compass. Continue to throw money and resources at fighting horrid crimes and bringing criminals to justice but don’t bite your nose to spite your face.

Sincere regards,
Adam Bell
9a Aubrey Rd
Northbridge NSW 2063

While your motivation to write this piece stems from opposition to a particular policy, you are actually advocating for the petty frustration of general Government process.

As a public servant all that I see this blog realising is a lot more bored, nonplussed public servants who would otherwise have been doing something productive.

Normally I love your work.

Out of left field (can’t help myself) Bernard speaking of vaults, do you know if the renos to the big house, particularly the proposed tunnel/bunker, have taken any account of important cultural items and sites built into the foundations or are they just taking the Alice Springs approach where Barrett drive just cuts the tail of the caterpillar?

At a State level you cannot destroy correspondence. I would dare say that if this were to happen it would be a ‘hay making’ day for the opposition were it to be disclosed.

Further, if you write to the Minister about something not related to their responsibilities, they’ll at best flick your letter to the other Minister. More likely they will ask you to direct your other queries to that minister.

If you write to your representative then including irrelevant issues will not only delay your response but will only blur the point of your correspondence.

Be clear, be polite and be on point. Stick to the subject and be clear. State that you expect a reply.

If you want to delay your response, wait about four weeks and then write with other queries. Each time you do this it will take a while.

As for having ‘stock response’. It is true that they merely add bits in when they address your general concerns but the notion that all responses receive a stock response is only true to the extent that there exists a commonly asked question about a standing issue. In this case the response is highly likely to be formulaic. It is not accurate to infer that this is the case in all instances in which one writes to an MP.

I’ve already written an email to both the PM and Conroy. I don’t anticipate a decent response (or even any response at all), but I just hope that large numbers of people are also writing letters such that it at least creates additional workload for the bureaucrats. Sadly I am not sure what else I can do on this issue.

However, you’ve presented an incomplete view of what influences a Minister’s response to any approach from his constituents, be they individuals or corporations.

Experienced lobbyists work the Minister’s key staff directly by phone and/or email and observe one golden rule when doing this. i.e. you’ve got to offer a political advantage for the Minister as part of your approach. Make one gratuitous approach & you’ll fall down the ladder of access quick time. As you point out, the sheer volume of work facing Federal Ministers & their staff are overwhelming and they’re not interested in time wasters.

I thought you’d been a Ministerial staffer.

When a piece of correspondence is sent to an MP’s office for the consideration of a Minister, it is the humble electorate officer in the MP’s office who drafts the representation to the Minister, as well as the response to the sender of the correspondence informing them of the representation being made.

Subsequently, if one was to send a single piece of correspondence to an MP addressing concerns across a number of different ministerial portfolios, it is once again the electorate officer in the MP’s office that must draft the corresponding number of representations to each relevant minister.

For instance, if in your letter you raise concerns regarding say, net filtering, the CPRS, live stock trading, and the economic stimulus package, an individual representation must be made to Conroy, Wong, Bourke and Swan from the MP’s office. Each department would then respond to the individual representation, all of which are then filtered back through the MP to the constituent. This is incredibly time consuming for the MP’s office, no doubt, but for the departmental ‘bureaucrats’ you’re trying to stick it to it is no extra trouble at all. They only have to respond to the individual concern that is relevant to them.

You’re creating a backlog, but in entirely the wrong place. If you want to stop your local member from properly serving their electorate, as well as effectively representing you to whichever Minister is drawing your ire, go ahead and clog their office with inane correspondence. But if you truly value your right to hold your government to account, perhaps you can treat the channels through which you do so with a little more respect.

After all, wasn’t it Crikey who just days ago were lamenting the populist, gimmicky approach of SMH and the Tele for their campaigns to call an early election in NSW? This sort of schtick is one and the same.

Nope, no cigar. A decent office will have ‘standard’ paragraphs on w wide range of issues which they’ll just cut and paste into a document, or they’ll agglomerate different ‘standard’ letter letters into a sinlgle letter with trite conjunctions.

“There are other ways of being heard - joining a lobby group for example - that do get the Ministers attention.”

Ha! Do lobby groups have any sway over preselections? If so, why is Labor stalling on electoral funding reform (which GetUp! wants). Could it be that the unions (who do have sway in preselections) have applied a bit of pressure to stop their own Parlimantary wing?

Writing to your local MP is much more effective.