Crazy government websites

Image: Baloo cartoons.

Last week in the IPA’s ‘Hey… What did I miss’ page, some attention was given to the plethora of Australian government websites around:

Today we learned the Prime Minister spent $53,000 to run a couple of blogs. I wish that was the worst of it. Here’s just some of the other 900+ websites taxpayers fund:

• ‘A Healthy and Active Australia’ (apparently we need a government website to know it’s good to be healthy and active)
• ‘Alcohol.gov.au’ (sadly not an online liquor store)
• ‘Artbank’ (yes, the Australian government buys art and rents it commercially!)
• ‘Fashion Rules’ (unfortunately not a bureaucrats’ guide to fashion – that would at least be funny)
• ‘Rainfall Reliability Wizard’ (presumably not managed by Tim Flannery)
• And my favourite: ‘Australian National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises’ (don’t ask me what it’s for, I have no idea)

In the current issue another site, even more nonsensical has been discovered. It is the tellmesomethingidontknow.gov.au site (seriously, you just can’t make this stuff up)

In it you will find lots of interesting snippets like, how many people want human rights training for others (81%), old people live in their own homes alone by choice, there are enough disabled people to populate Adelaide, some famous people are descended from refugees, and to cap it all off, some animals are homosexual. You were all just busting to hear that, weren’t you?

The most innovative part is the sharing section, carrying the label, “Tell someone who cares.” It is not known what genius thought of this one but whoever it was must really out of touch with the idiom out there.

“Tell someone who cares,” is the expression used in polite society in place of the more robust saying, “I don’t give a f…,” something that is well understood. It is like the conversation:

Steve: You could do something to help, Charlie.
Charlie: Why?
Steve: Well, it would get me out of trouble.
Charlie: I suppose I could give you 20 cents Steve.
Steve: What the hell is the use of 20 cents?
Charlie: You could use it to ring someone who cares.

You get the picture.