I’ve always thought that what happened on tour stayed on tour, but Peter Debnam is defying that sporting adage and blogging his “Get NSW Back in Front – Living the Issues Tour“.
Today my wife Deb and I kicked off our Get NSW Back in Front – Living the Issues Tour in Balgowlah Heights with Manly candidate Mike Baird, by announcing our $40million “Cleaner Fuels, Cleaner Air� policy. We will cut the cost of registration by $50 for Hybrid and LPG vehicles and encourage people to switch to environmentally-friendly vehicles to reduce emissions and address the issue of climate change. (We’re getting around in environmentally-friendly vehicles with my name on the side – if you see us come over and say hi!)
This could be a much needed injection of humanity in the usually tightly wound personality that is Debnam.Hopefully it’s not ghost written and he will be actually punching out the daily text on his own keyboard late at night, glass of wine in hand, wearing his pajamas while watching South Park, Nip/Tuck or CSI. Allowing his wife Deb to have a go at giving us her perspective about life on tour would also be a nice addition to the diary.
On a meta blogging note, there is no comments facility, so it’s not really blogging as such, but I don’t expect it would be easy to manage that end of things while doing the meet and greet with Thommo and Jan in downtown Gosford, so he’s easily forgiven for that small crime against blogging.
On the other hand, the lack of RSS is a serious faux pas by the site designer.
I know it probably marks me as some kind of sick addicted weirdo, but I’ve gotta have my daily dose of Debnam pushed right to my Google reader (the best on the market BTW) and into my cerebral cortex.
C’mon Pete, bookmarking is too soft for me. Gimmie some RSS!
Update: Peter Debnam’s “blog” now has RSS feeds.
I give it a week.
And I agree — no comment box, no blog!
That’s not a blog. That’s a press release.
While there are Laura Norder problems on the Coast, I surprised Debnam did not raise the water crisis here. A wasted opportunity.
In design terms it looks like any old piece of junk mail shoved through the letter box around election time.
Sticking up what is basically a bog ordinary webpage and labelling it a ‘blog’ indicates that they haven’t really thought this through.
Still, it does have some amusing touches. The use of the folksy “G’day and welcome to my blog” (‘Hi Peter. Hello blog’) combined with the rock and roll “Get NSW Back in Front – Living the Issues Tour“ (‘Hello Umina! How ya doin?! Orrighht!!’) is pretty cute.
And I do have some serious reservations about the slogan. Won’t this be easily bastardised to “Get NSW Back To Front”? Why are we going back anyway? Shouldn’t we be going forward? Is this some subtle play on the long-forgotten Beatles tune Get Back?
The photos are also pretty interesting:
1) Two old blokes in FJ trousers crack-on to the branch secretary while Peter guards the van.
2) Peter guards a sheet of plywood.
3) Peter chats to a local while guarding Elders Real Estate.
And if he regards a trip up the street to Balgowlah Heights as getting out of his comfort zone, I’d say this campaign’s in pretty serious trouble.
Debnam is not only one dimension and inhuman, but entirely unelectable. He can blog all he wants, but come election day, Iemma will be returned to office, by default. Its a real shame.
Must say, I’m a little surprised that Peter hasn’t got a link to his sponsors, flogging the latest in self-flagellants and cilices.
No problem whatsoever with the proposition that he needed to get out more.
Pressing the flesh, like virtue, is its own reward, regardless of who it belongs to.
I think Debo could take a few campaign tips from Lachlan Connor’s finely-tuned Senate campaign http://www.grods.com/post/978/
ohhh the font is burning my eyes for some reason.
I’ve been watching the SMH’s coverage of Debnam’s progress around the state, and took especial note of this article, where a woman takes a cavalier attitute to her professional career and her sales margin in order to claim her 5 seconds of fame:
When I look again, this same Cheryl Bennett the real estate agent is heavily featured in a sidebar on Debnam’s site, griping about how shitty her local area is and asking for the Government to crack down on the kids who throw eggs at her car on the weekend.
Is this the best Debnam supporter they can find?
Agreed – I checked it out over my first coffee of the morning when I saw Phil’s post and it wasn’t the best start to my day!
Telly’s coverage today:
Debo has hit cyberspace because all the help he is getting from the Tele, The Oz (Volkische Beobachter)and the SMH is not doing all that much. So he’s now appealing to you savvy lot, who are blatantly ignoring voting instructions from the fishwraps.
Bloody hell, my eyes hurt.
On day one Debnam will wreck the marine park … did anyone else get crawly skin when they read this line: ‘Deb told me later that she thought Victoria was a great asset and would provide wonderful support to Craig if he is elected Member for Port Stephens.’
And this:
“Only around 7% of the entire Port Stephens – Great Lakes Marine Park will be available to fish in, it’s like making someone farm in the desert!”
Well, I guess at least the fishermen can look forward to federal subsidies then. Kick back and enjoy it while the Nats last, fishos!
sunday morning, last year, local beach cafe in sydney’s east, while waiting for a bucket of latte, pete and deb (deb debnam??) are tucking into brekkie… i smiled when our eyes met while we were paying, as you do with anyone, but not a smile back from pete, he just looked away!! which is v. unusual, as 95% of people smile in these type of very normal social situations… anyway, must have seen him & mrs deb. about 30 sunday mornings in a row at same cafe, never chatting to anyone, avoiding eye contact like the plague. i wanted to do the ’social snub’ back at him, but sadly, never got the chance. (didn’t say i’m not petty)
whichever spin merchants and pr gurus are getting paid to pump blood into this bloke, are earning their filthy lucre. even charles prentiss (stephen fry in absolute power) would take a very long G&T before tackling ‘citizen debnam’.
Note to all candidates – Lachlan Connor included – don’t use Peter Debnam’s website developers. Apparently there are specialist companies designing electorate websites! Apparently prepared to do them for anyone. Who would have thought.
For a web design site, why are there no examples of their work? Oh wait, I think I understand…
Debbers already does give us RSS – he’s a Really Silly Sausage.
Yes, Avant-Garde (for the text) is a rotten typeface for reading anything other than headlines. Large type required on web pages, guys. The font size here at LP is the lowest size that is viable on blogs, I think.
However, it’s great that they have a blog ready, with all the latest in web-design fashions, just in time for the 1999 election.
Animated GIF? Urgh!
‘Impact’ typeface (“Blackouts/Contact Peter’s office”, bottom left as the page opens in your browser)? Nyurgh.
No permalinks? Blargh!
Message clash: will fishermen [sic] be locked out of 60% of the marine park, as Debnam’s 9 Jan article says, or 93%, which the bloke in the sidebar of the same article says?
And “fishermen”? Surely it’s easy to not insult potentially conservative-voting female anglers, while using words that don’t sound PC/wishy-washy?
On the bright side, the media release about the blog doesn’t say “Peter will be writing a ‘web-log’, or online ‘diary’ ” or other awkward I-wanna-be-hip-but-it-ain’t-happening jargon.
And at least there are in-browser video viewers and audio players. Something is rotten in NSW, apparently, and one of the audio clips is entitled “Knife Bill”.
Fair enough, too, I thought, look what that mongrel did to Uma Thurman. But it turned out to be a very blokey-sounding Debnam (much deeper voice than the short video) chatting to Laura Norder.
Do you think anybody has told these alleged developers of the difference between print and web?
NSW Labor MP Gerard Martin says the blog should read:
“January 10, 2007: Cigarettes, 0; alcohol units, 0; hands on hips photographs taken, 173; times I’ve used the word crisis today, 4352; explanation of policies, 0; workers I plan to sack if elected, 20,000.
Dear Diary, today I abandoned country NSW because I have no answers for their tough questions. Especially that doozy about how many services will go when I sack all those nurses, teachers and police.
I think I will stay home in the Vaucluse penthouse today with Rogan (his pet kelpie): at least he’s stopped asking about the 20,000 jobs. Later, I’ll go to a school and take a photo, but I won’t talk to anyone.
Tally ho, PJD.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21039531-25090,00.html
yep, who do you tip to play the caddish yet strangely attractive badlove figure in the movie version?
Oh, that’s just gotta be David Smith. Sure he lacks the charisma and general foppishness of Hugh Grant, but we’re talking NSW Liberals here. Conspiratorial balding fat-man is about the best you’re gonna get.
Hey Phil – you may be interested in http://www.peterdebnam.com.au/component/option,com_rss/Itemid,0/feed,RSS2.0/no_html,1/
(I agree about the font David)