The Australian Public and Politics Online: Reinforcing or Reinventing Representation?

Fears for the health of representative politics in advanced industrial democracies have gained increasing prominence in recent years with observers pointing to a growing body of evidence that citizens are disengaging from formal politics. One of the solutions put forward to address these perceived problems is the incorporation, by politicians, of new communication channels such as the Internet and the WWW. To date, however, attention has focused largely on the supply-side of online engagement by politicians and legislatures rather than on levels of demand and actual use among citizens, with governments frequently being rated on their performance via international league tables. This article aims to provide a ‘bottom-up ’ perspective to the debate in the Australian context, looking at the e-democracy and particularly e-representation debate from the public’s perspective. Specifically we address two key questions: how much support do such initiatives attract? And can they bring about the mobilisation of les