Today we’re retiring Election Leaflets, a project that enabled people to upload and search political advertising from around Australia.
When we launched it in 2010, online political transparency was thin. People were getting floods of campaign material in their letterboxes but had no simple way to see what was being sent to other voters. Election Leaflets filled that gap. It helped expose questionable claims, highlighted targeting tactics, and gave journalists and researchers a common reference point.
The environment has shifted. A majority of political advertising happens on social media or online. Election Leaflets hasn’t been updated since 2014. However, keeping it online still requires hosting, maintenance and technical effort that is better spent on projects where we can have the most impact.
So we’re saying goodbye.
We’re focusing our limited resources on the services that people use and rely on every day: Right to Know, PlanningAlerts, and They Vote For You. These projects continue to deliver strong public value and need our attention as the policy and digital landscape keeps shifting.
Thank you to everyone who contributed leaflets, shared the project or used the data for research. The National Library of Australia has preserved the site in its web archive, so the public record remains available. The source code is also available on Github.