Malcolm Turnbull would like everyone to be given a government issued lifetime lasting email address, supposedly to cut postage or something. He worries that the Government wastes money by posting things which they could email. Well, there are in theory people who don't use or own computers. The number of these Luddites is not known. On the other hand of the spectrum are people who get too many emails and don't get the time to read them.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the idea should be vetoed. The temptation for government to send out useless spam -
like email to the citizens would be too great. It would be mixed in with other important information such as news that your car was deregistered because a parking fine was not processed properly and therefore people would be compelled to wade through the spam just in case. The obsessive types would want to login everyday just in case they missed something. Naturally some legislation would be enacted which would deem you to have been duly served with anything which the government wanted you to be served with, the instant the email was sent.

Those who already know the perils of being obliged to receive large documents by email and then having the option of reading them on the screen or printing them, know that this move would be the old "lets use the other bloke's printer trick", (and their bandwidth). This trick has its brother, the old "make the customer your data input employee" trick. This is where you fill in the data for the supplier saving them the cost of employing somebody to do it, by making you do it online. As an extra benefit any mistakes made, are entirely the fault of the customer, who is unfamiliar with the system.

Anyway, I always thought Australia Post was owned by the Federal Government, so it gets to use its own services when using the mail system. Unless Malcolm is planning on downsizing Australia Post but hasn't told anyone yet.