In June this year, I wrote a piece for Crikey.com.au on the lack of interest by Australian political parties in Second Life as a campaigning platform. I even contacted the offices of the Minister and Shadow Minister for Communications asking them for their thoughts on Second Life – with absolutely no response.

Now that the 2007 Federal Election is underway, it’s fairly safe to assume there’s not going to be any official campaigning in Second Life and it also doesn’t look likely that any grassroots efforts are underway. Given the heavy presence of US presidential hopefuls in SL, was I being naive in assuming there would at least be some activity from an Australian perspective? I fully understand that with a lot less than 15000 active Aussie SL users, there’s not a lot of political gain in terms of votes gained – but surely there’s some awareness of the value of being perceived as innovative. The first Australian political party who sets up in SL is pretty much guaranteed widespread, mainstream media coverage.

I’d also be interested in hearing suggestions of how political parties could actually be of use in SL, if at all. I intend on bundling up the suggestions and emailing them to each of the parties for comment.