It's YouTube week in Federal Parliament

Social media seems to be one of the topics of the week among our political commentators. But while our politicians are increasingly using social media tools like YouTube and MySpace to carry their political messages, creativity seems to be sorely lacking. Check this latest piece on YouTube from our PM John Howard. It hardly oozes the fun, vibrant and irrevant tone to videos YouTube users have come to so dearly admire. The PM's stiff and conservative style clearly makes him the wrong person to be delivering the party's message in this forum. The hammering the video got in the comments forum is evidence of that and according a few people speaking on tonight's ABC Radio PM program, a John Howard policy mesaage would be the last thing they would log onto YouTube for.

Full credit to both parties for recognising the legitimacy of social media. But rather than replicating the standard approach of talking to a static camera, maybe they would be better to find people more connected, popular and credible with YouTube style audiences and develop creative ways to deliver their messages.