Blog Yellek » morialta http://yellek.org/blog Thoughts of a Technologist in South Australia Thu, 27 Oct 2011 07:43:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 SA State Election Technology Credentials: My Endorsement for Morialta http://yellek.org/blog/2010/03/15/sa-state-election-technology-credentials-my-endorsement-for-morialta/ http://yellek.org/blog/2010/03/15/sa-state-election-technology-credentials-my-endorsement-for-morialta/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:39:33 +0000 yellek http://yellek.org/blog/?p=419 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.

]]> http://yellek.org/blog/2010/03/15/sa-state-election-technology-credentials-my-endorsement-for-morialta/feed/ 1 Technology and the South Australian State Election http://yellek.org/blog/2010/02/12/technology-and-the-south-australian-state-election/ http://yellek.org/blog/2010/02/12/technology-and-the-south-australian-state-election/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:15:17 +0000 yellek http://yellek.org/blog/?p=360 Recent controversy surrounding the attorney general Michael Atkinson’s attempts to censor the internet have made one thing abundantly clear: we are served by a bunch of politicians who have no idea about technology. With a South Australian state election coming up on march 20th I’d like to do something to change that. What I propose is this: That a list of technology questions be sent to each candidate for the election and the results published.

I propose to do this for the seat of Morialta which is the one I live in and publish the results here. I will offer to link to any other posts that do the same for other electorates.

I don’t seriously think that this effort will unseat Michael Atkinson in Croydon but I do think that technology is an issue that affects many people’s lives and we owe it to ourselves to elect as many people as we can who actually have a clue what is going on. To that end here is my draft list of questions, comments are welcome:

  1. What web browser do you use?
  2. What is your day to day computer (PC, Apple, Laptop) etc?
  3. What social networking sites do you or your staff use (Facebook, Twitter, Others) and where can we find you on those sites?
  4. Do you have a blog and if so what is the address
  5. In your opinion, what is the role of the internet in the South Australian political process?
  6. What role should government play in regulating the internet?
  7. What are your thoughts on how to address objectionable content on the internet? What role should government play in this process?
  8. Do you support an R18+ classification for computer games?
  9. Tell us about the policies that your party has that would influence the use of technology if elected.

Update:
Question suggested by @lordfolland on Twitter:
What are your thoughts on the funding of computers for schools?

Other Electorates:
The following people have offered to do other electorates:

Davenport
Alex Prichard (@azp74)
Enfield
Mark Limburg (@Wyld)
Newland
David Folland (@lordfolland)
Norwood
appsii (@appsii)
Reynell
Damien Mason (@chimpocalypse)
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