We at Crikey flag our prejudices up front – so here’s a subjective statement: Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett has the country’s best political blog. It doesn’t just talk about policy. It explains the life of politics. It provides some real insights. It’s the perfect example of frank and direct communication – the very model of how The Observer’s advice to MPs to stop spinning and start blogging can work. Here’s his take on political blogging:

I started blogging without any fanfare on August 17, 2004, while I was still Parliamentary Leader of the Democrats. My aims in doing so were varied:

– to de-mystify the political process and make it more accessible to people;
– to use it as a sounding board for thoughts and ideas;
– to seek people’s views and to provide a way to answer some of their questions – in a transparent and accountable format;
– to inform people in a bit more depth about some current issues and point them to where they can find more information
– as a way to provide my views to the public directly in a more conversational form, rather them having to do so in a way that has to attract sufficient interest from the media to report them (usually in very truncated form);
– to let people know a bit about what politicians do with their time;
– as something approximating a hobby;
– just to try it out and see whether it could ‘work’ for a federal politician.

I think it’s fair to say I’ve achieved most of those aims to some extent. The number of visitors to the site has climbed fairly steadily and consistently over time, and a good proportion of them return. Whether that means any extra votes at election time is a different matter, but one that it is not unreasonable for politicians to assess before deciding whether the time and energy of real blogging is worth it.

Some of the blog entries which have proved to be the most widely read have been those covering the debates or passage of major legislation, such as the workplace laws or the RU486 votes, as well as those marking particular events, such as the deaths of Don Chipp or Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

I try to use the blog to talk about the substance of issues, rather than feed the notion of politics as sport or as something mysterious involving artful strategists using tactics beyond the comprehension of all but the cleverest of analysts. I also try to give some insights into what politicians do, how some of the processes work and a few of my thoughts and feelings on non-political things – from potato chip flavours to Jason Akermanis and Steve Irwin – just to provide a bit of variety.

I haven’t used podcasting or videoblogging yet. Although I expect I will at some stage, I don’t see much value in using technology just for the sake of it. Most of the examples by others that I’ve seen and heard have not been very engaging.

There is a much greater use of blogs by parliamentarians in the UK, as well as by party members and the politically active. I put this down predominantly to the fact that Australian politics is so stifled by the straightjacket of party discipline. The party line straightjacket on Australian MPs means that the public sees politicians as parroting the party line when they give an opinion, and even if it seems a genuine personal view, it doesn’t matter much, as they will be forced to toe the party line anyway. This is also affected by a mainstream media keen to leap on any sign of ‘division’ within a party, so politicians tend to be loathe to express any opinion which could be used to beat up a story. Hence even the few politicians’ blogs that have appeared on the Australian political scene have been mostly fairly sterile.

I have been a bit surprised that genuine blogs haven’t become a bit more widespread in Australia at local government level. The lesser role of party politics at local level, as well as the more personal, locality based nature of local government, would seem to be more suited to the two-way communication and personal style that the best blogs have.

My blog is an attempt to remind people that their views do count, there are ways they can make an impact and that most of what they read from the ‘experts’ is just opinion of no greater substance that anyone else’s. It’s also an attempt to remind people that issues of substance do get dealt with in the Parliament, and the outcomes of legislative debates and committee inquiries directly affect people’s lives.

To me, the comments section of a blog is its most valuable, albeit fraught, aspect. Frankly I don’t think any website without a comment facility can really be called a blog. At their best, you can get a good quality debate on an important issue with a range of valuable ideas. It has also sometimes proved to be a useful way for me to test and refine my ideas. At its worst, you get defamatory, bigoted slanging matches. However, the comments I get on my blog from people across the political spectrum are usually of a much higher standard than what I have to listen to in the Senate chamber.

Trying to allow freedom of speech without letting your blog become an unwitting platform for flagrant racial and religious prejudice, mindless abuse or deliberate deceit is a difficult balance, but it is far preferable to having no comments at all. Even the websites of News Limited columnists like Andrew Bolt allow comments from the public, so why shouldn’t politicians?