I blogged a while ago about how the candidates for the US Election were using Twitter as a means of promoting their campaigns. Compare this to Australian Politics and its use of Social media, and it seems to be behind the eight ball, but slowly picking up.

So what’s there at the moment in terms of Social Media and ‘Web 2.0′ stuff? Well both Liberal and Labor parties both have their own YouTube Channel’s (Liberal YouTube Channel, Labor YouTube Channel) as well as RSS Feeds (Labor RSS, Liberal RSS). They both have Facebook groups setup, with the Liberal party also linking each members Facebook profile, if they have one. MySpace also features for both parties.

What kids of numbers are we talking about here? Well not too much actually, if you checkout their respective YouTube Channels, you are talking around 600-1,500 users. Facebook groups are roughly the same, but its slowly growing.

Lately, whats really got me exited is the recent use of Twitter, similar to what has happened in the US. Only two days ago Malcolm Turnbull, who is the current Leader of the Opposition, signed up to Twitter. His Twitter name is TurnbullMalcolm, and he has already been posting updates, and responding to peoples questions! He already has alomst 500 followers in two days.

Taking it a step further, his website now features quite a bit of social media types of links – including his Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, and of course, what he is currently tweeting on Twitter.

Its going to be interesting to see how the use of social media continues to grow for politics in Australia…In the meantime, make sure you say “’sup to @TurnbullMalcolm“…