I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com

Inside the beltway
Posted by rod@drury.net.nz in Exporting, TechBiz at 3:28 pm on Friday, 13 October 2006

I had a 90 minute one on one today with a Member of Parliament to talk through issues around developing our software industry. I really appreciated the opportunity and wanted to make sure I had some clear messages to convey.

It blows me away that in our country we can actually get close to our representatives.

In summary these are the messages I focussed on:

  1. How this is an exciting time for ICT and that are natural barriers to trade don’t apply to us. At the grass roots level there are people delivering on our vision for a knowledge economy.
  2. Procurement policy is the number one thing where Government can help to improve to foster the development of new companies. This is so important we need a Procurement Ombudsman (article coming out in next months ‘The Channel’ magazine on that).
  3. Our Exporters are hero’s and we need to raise aspirations. This includes the desire to receive investment.
  4. With no capital gains tax (and suggestion of one being political suicide) we need to have policies that encourage investment in business. This might include R&D incentives, Export incentives and perhaps depreciation relief on plant and equipment.
  5. I got my Global Market Maturity Model in. To be Global we need to be connected (Broadband). See post from Juha.

I’m impressed with many in the new Blue Team. There have some great people with real business experience. They know we need to grow the pie. It’s tough, but I believe they have to roll Don to give John Keys time to build his brand and style for the next election.

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Comments(2)

    Comment by Juha at 1:38 pm on 15 October 2006

    Apropos the new Blue Team, you might be interested in this blog entry:
    http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/1285

    which has some history on one of the older members of the Team…




    Comment by Rod Drury > HiTech Awards at 3:16 pm on 6 November 2006

    [...] The Prime Minister spoke, and while I’m not her #1 fan I thought she did an excellent speech and actually understands the potential of the industry. David Cunliffe is also getting it and even said that one of the biggest issues in the industry is Government Procurement Policy. Maybe we’re having an effect? Angus Tait, the grandfather of our industry also did great speech that reinforced we have to deliver on our potential. [...]