Published on the 26/09/2014 | Written by Newsdesk

The votes have been cast and counted. National has achieved a record third consecutive term and is the second party in the global history of MMP to be in a position to form a government on its own. The Labour Party meanwhile is in disarray after its worst election result since 1922, and the InternetMana Party, despite being bankrolled to the tune of $3 million by Kim Dotcom, is nowhere to be seen.From an IT perspective, some were heartened to see a political party formed around technology policies – IT is, after all, becoming more and more embedded in our lives. The Internet Party’s IT policy was a fairly well thought out contribution to the policy arena. In broad strokes, it promised a second submarine fibre cable, ultra-fast fibre broadband to 97.8 percent of New Zealanders, and universal internet to bridge the digital divide. Had they been successful (and special votes are still a faint hope) there might have been leverage for more urgency to the ultra-fast broadband initiatives being completed and delivering an economic return to businesses sooner rather than whenever.

Unfortunately, the shenanigans of Dotcom – his ill-advised tweets, incitation of hatred towards political rivals and, most notably, his ‘Moment of Truth’ event which failed to bring down Prime Minister Key as promised – brought the reputation of the fledgling party in to disrepute. Not to mention its uneasy marriage with the Mana Party.

Dotcom and InternetMana even failed to get the ICT industry on their side, as evidenced by Xero CEO Rod Drury’s outburst at a pre-election debate hosted by NZ Tech. He told InternetMana’s elected leader Laila Harre that “we’ve been in the industry for 20 years and you don’t speak for us, Kim Dotcom should go away”, adding that the Party’s policies were “insulting”. Following the outburst Dury went on TVNZ’s Q+A programme to say that at the beginning it was “really cool” to see someone like Dotcom get into politics but his manipulation of the media had turned it into “a big sideshow”.

It went from bad to worse. Following the ‘Moment of Truth’ flop, John Armstrong branded Dotcom as “a national laughing stock” in his New Zealand Herald political column of the 17th September.

Despite the failure of the InternetMana Party to attain a seat in parliament, the ICT policies of all the major political parties show that ICT is now firmly on the political agenda. iStart attended a number technology and innovation-focused political panel discussions in the run up to the election, and it was clear from these that the parties generally agree on the need to support ICT and innovation – although the way they intend to do so often differed markedly.

According to Paul Matthews, CEO of the Institute if IT Professionals (IITP), IT was not only a topic of debate at industry panel discussions, but also featured heavily at a political debate focused on small business where the first three questions were about ICT. “And they weren’t even questions from us,” he added, referring to IITP’s presence.

Matthews said that while we as an industry have traditionally done a poor job of explaining what we are about, we are getting better at it. The result is that Government is beginning to listen and to put IT on the agenda. Let’s hope that Dotcom’s lesson has been learned and his influence comes to an end.