After a tip-off from Grendel, I have sent the following email to Steve Fielding.

To: senator.fielding@aph.gov.au
From: The Editor
Subject: Coat Of Arms

Dear Senator Fielding,

I notice that you display the Commonwealth Coat Of Arms on your personal webpage, www.stevefielding.com. Can you tell me if this is in compliance with the Trade Practices Act and the Trade Marks Act?

“The Commonwealth Coat of Arms is the pre-eminent mark of Commonwealth authority, power and function. Its use, with a few limited exceptions, is limited to the Commonwealth Parliament, the Australian Government and the Federal Courts. The Arms are not in the public domain.”

“Permission to use the Commonwealth Coat of Arms in other than the context of denoting Commonwealth authority and property, is granted by this department, on a case by case basis, but usually in only two circumstances, to sporting teams representing Australia in international competition, and for educational purposes.”

“Use of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms without permission may be in breach of sections 53 (c) and (d) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, Section 145.1 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 or Section 39 (2) of the Trade Marks Act 1995.”

Regards,
The Editor

Some bloggers have noticed that at today’s interest rates press conference John Howard stood in front of a giant Australian flag backdrop rather than the standard backdrop displaying the Liberal Party campaign slogan “Go For Growth”.

(Image from here)

There is speculation that since the Reserve Bank reckons growth equals further interest rates rises the Libs have shat themselves and binned the growth slogan. Might be something in that. Here’s the Liberal Party website header today:

And here’s the Liberal Party website header on October 14, 2007:

Looks like John Howard has been forced to dump his slogan with three weeks of the campaign remaining.

UPDATE (8/11): As noted by Mikey in comments, the header image has now been changed back to the “Go For Growth” version. Maybe they were just steering clear of the growth thing on Black Wednesday…

What is it with politicians and try-hard kids’ pages on their websites? GrodsCorp has looked at John Howard’s kidZONE before but that abomination looks positively cutting edge when compared to Kevin Andrews’ Kids Page (no apostrophe in sight):

Yep. That’s it. Isn’t that simply the lamest piece of web design and content authoring you’ve ever seen? And I know that kids who are unfortunate enough to stumble across that page will be thrilled to be pointed towards the Commonwealth government’s Internet Police website.

But then again, it could be worse. The poor kids could burn their retinas on Kev’s photo page instead:

Aargh! My eyes!