'Gen Txt' gets the party line

By RICHARD PAMATATAU


The Labour Party is courting Generation Txt through its "Headsup" project.

Youth Affairs Minister John Tamihere said Headsup would help to establish a relationship with young people, using technology they were comfortable with.

Tamihere said text messaging was informal and reduced communication to pure information-seeking with little space for emotion or rhetoric.

He said Headsup, which the party had tested since July, was a great demonstration of how the technology could be adapted to a range of uses.

"Young people may be changing the way English is used with text messaging, but they are communicating their views and Labour has to be able to listen and understand it."

The website, www.headsup.co.nz, and text engine had been built by Wellington companies Mission Hall Creative and Run The Red respectively.

The site allows people to take part in real-time chat sessions with Labour ministers by texting (at no cost to themselves) questions they'd like answered.

Tamihere said the questions had been direct and focused at issues, and there had been no foolish messages.



Young people in particular were familiar with texting and it had no time constraints, he said. "I look at my wife and the kids, and they are happy to text each other at any time of the night or day."

He said Labour now had another access point to youth and in future it could text out information about policy, or issues affecting them. It was also much cheaper than a hard copy mailouts, he said, citing the $16,000 it costs to send flyers to the 24,000 voters in his electorate.

Tamihere said the youth project could be extended to other groups. Closed groups could be formed, for example, to "provide a forum for boy racers to have their say".

Labour president Mike Williams said the party website had also been given a revamp.

The new look is in its early stages but the party is considering how the site could be used to raise money and reach out to more New Zealanders.

He said Labour was aware how some American politicians had used the internet to raise funds.

Run the Red director Justin Boersma said it was the first time the company had worked for a political party and he was impressed with Labour's vision in testing texting technology.

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