I recently addressed a number of questions on technology to the candidates for the seat of Morialta in the upcoming South Australian state election. My efforts were not spectacularly successful in gaining responses with only Scott Andrews from the Greens responding.

Here then is my assessment of the technology credentials of each of the candidates based on the response I received and on information gleaned from questions I asked at the Campbelltown Speakers Forum

Lindsay Simmons, the Labor sitting member, stated that she didn’t know much about technology at all. She does not have a Facebook page or understand social media at all and even prefers to let her staff deal with email. Whilst I respect her committment to dealing with issues raised by her constituents she appears to prefer an older style of interaction that enfranchises those who have the time and capacity to interact in person and by letter. In my opinion there is no chance that she would be able to influence government technology policy in any menaingful way and certainly she would not be able to curb the excesses of Michael Atkinson in the Labor Caucus.

John Gardner, the Liberal candidate, seems to understand technology and how it could be used to improve the political process. He has a Facebook group and is a member of Facebook although there have been no updates since February 25. I feel that John may be able to influence technology policy.

Scott Andrews, the Greens candidate does not appear from his response to have a great grasp of technology and its uses. His party the Greens, however, seem to have a great set of technology policies that will make a real difference.

The Save the RAH Party do not even seem to have a website that I could find so enough said about the technology credentials of their candidate Peter Maddern.

Despite several requests to the offices of Family First and a written letter delivered to their candidate for Hartley, Suzanne Neal, I have received no response from their candidate Elizabeth Smit. If Suzanne Neal’s performance at the Campbelltown Speakers Forum is anything to go by they don’t seem to have much of a clue about a lot of things and their website is pretty bad (see the text in the image on the front page rendered illegible by JPEG compression artifacts).

So my endorsement for candidate technology credentials for Morialta goes to John Gardner although if he really understood wouldn’t he update facebook more often? Highly commended are the Greens for their party policies.