Tag Archives: parliamentary voting

Last week in Parliament

You may have been reading about the unsuccessful amendments to the Coronavirus Economic Response Package that opposition MPs and Senators attempted to pass last week. The amendments related to expanding the Government’s JobKeeper payment to include more workers, such as casual workers, workers with major charities and working-visa holders who are still in the country. […]

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Coronavirus and our Federal Parliament

Our federal parliament is scheduled to sit next week but, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, it’s going to look a bit different. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister released a media release explaining the type of changes we should expect. In a nut shell, our parliament is battening down the hatches and reducing its business to […]

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Who will you vote for this election? A party or a person?

They Vote For You is based on the principle of holding individual representatives to account. You can find your representative’s report card and see how your electorate’s voting power is being used in Parliament. If you’re unhappy with what you find, you can contact your representative and ask for an explanation. And if you’re very […]

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They Vote For You: “dishonest”?

A common query we get over email or social media is how we choose what bills appear on They Vote For You and why we don’t just include every bill that passes through Parliament. Occasionally, these queries are accompanied by accusations of dishonesty, inaccuracy, bias and more. As much as I’d love to dismiss these […]

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Rebels in the ranks? Hardly.

Members of parliamentary parties rarely cross the floor, because parties expect loyalty from their team members. … [Crossing the floor] may be seen to be giving greater preference to the needs of the electorate than the needs of the party. … A member of parliament who crosses the floor may be considered a traitor to […]

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And what a hackfest it was

September 15th is The International Day of Democracy and this year also marked the start of the Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW). GLOW is a week of openness activities around the world, with events hosted by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership and members of the parliamentary openness community. To celebrate […]

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Time for another hackfest – Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW) edition

A photo from a previous OpenAustralia Hackfest

The OpenAustralia Foundation is pleased to invite you to another one of our legendary hackfests. In some of our previous hackfests we’ve opened PlanningAlerts to over 1.8 million more Australians and brought hacks and hackers together to launch our Freedom of Information project Right To Know. Places are limited so RSVP for free now or […]

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Parliamentary vote tracker project: A Case Study – Asylum Seeker Policy

This post is part of a series on our parliamentary vote tracker project. Read our previous post to learn more about the concept of policies and policy selection. You can also read our previous posts: a technical update and an introduction to what we’re doing and why. Co-authored by Natasha Burrows. Specific wordings of policies have been […]

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Parliamentary vote tracker project: what we are doing and why

Chamber Red and Notice Paper

Hello! Welcome to a series of posts about the OpenAustralia Foundation’s new conception, a parliamentary vote tracker. This project is based on the Public Whip, a site developed in the UK by Julian Todd and Francis Irving. The point of this project is to make the processes and procedures of parliament more accessible to the […]

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A long overdue tech update about Australia’s first ever parliamentary vote tracker

Photo of working on the project

Back in July last year Matthew told you that we’d started work on a new project and it’s high time for an update on the progress of that project. I want to share with you what we’ve been doing, where we’re at right now, and some exciting new development that we’re undertaking before we launch […]

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