Australian Prime Minister's climate change blog

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's climate change blog is now live and already attracting many well-thought out comments at the Prime Minister's website.

Like the Department of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy's Digital Economy blog, the PM has opted for a topic-based blog with a limited lifespan - in this case 5 days. The blog is also pre-moderated and only between the hours of 9 to 5 on week days. While there are good reasons for organisations to manage online media within their operational hours, one potential outcome can be more disjointed conversations and less spontaneous interactions than in a post-moderation environment.

The PM's blog has some additional restrictions comments are limited to 300 words and does not allow links to other source material or websites.

Unlike the Digital Economy blog, there are indications that the PM will operate the new blog on an ongoing basis, targeting topics sequentially, but only posting occasionally.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that the PM is writing his own blog posts (Blog standard approach brings PM to the people).

What is already clear is that there is a large pool of people willing, ready and able to interact with Australian government via the online channel.