WA Labor giant our top tweeting pollie
He's towered above fellow parliamentarians for years, but now Western Australia's Ken Travers has overtaken Kevin Rudd as the nation's most prolific tweeting politician.
The state Labor opposition spokesman has tweeted 11,600 times - more than any other WA politician - since joining Twitter in October 2011.
While Mr Rudd, whose 2007 digital election campaign Kevin07 launched him to selfie stardom worldwide, has tweeted 10,000 times since joining the site two years before Travers.
Mr Travers said the microblogging site was a useful way to engage with constituents in his spare time, particularly on topics such as transport and agriculture.
"One of the things I like about catching the train is you can actually sit there and go through looking at different articles on the internet and then often (tweet) about it," Mr Travers said.
"My tweets are probably at specific times in the morning or particularly when I'm sitting in parliament."
Mr Travers said while he had never taken a shaving selfie, he did tweet a picture of himself angry-faced at a train station over the state government's new $2-a-day parking tax.
But standing at 200cm tall, he said the challenge for him was to take photos with other people without towering over them.
"I did one of my few selfies at a train station car park so all my colleagues could see I was out there at six o'clock in the morning," he said.
Mr Travers said Liberal politicians didn't use Twitter because they would cop too much criticism.
"On Twitter, if you put out a three slogan message you'll get a question back at you," he said.
"I'm pretty sure it's an instruction from above to basically tell them not to engage with the community."
