Category Archives: Projects

Last week in Parliament

By Mackay Ash | Published: April 17, 2020

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

By Mackay Ash | Published: March 20, 2020

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?

By Mackay Ash | Published: May 3, 2019

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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Do They Vote For You?

By Mackay Ash | Published: April 23, 2019
Barnaby Joyce's voting record

As the federal election draws closer and campaigning heats up, many MPs looking for re-election are making claims about what they’ve stood for in their time in parliament. But do the claims they’re making actually match their voting record?

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A new era for morph.io

By James Polley | Published: April 10, 2019

When morph.io was built, we leveraged a lot of awesome existing work already in the open-source ecosystem. In particular, we were able to heavily lean on work down by the Herokuish project had done to create a platform that can run scripts written in a variety of languages. The Herokuish project, in turn, built on […]

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Freedom of Information Amendments proposed

By Kat Szuminska | Published: November 23, 2018

On 23 August 2018 the Senate referred the Freedom of Information Legislation Amendment (Improving Access and Transparency) Bill 2018 to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 30 November 2018. Here is OpenAustralia Foundation’s submission to the Senate in response. Prepared by Ben Fairless, Katherine Szuminska, James Polley, Matthew Landauer SummaryAmends the: Archives […]

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Electronic voting is coming to the House of Representatives!

By Mackay Ash | Published: June 15, 2018

Two years after the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Procedure published a report supporting introducing electronic voting in the House of Representatives, Coalition MP Christopher Pyne has announced that the Government will be doing just that by 2019! While this is very good news and a step in the right direction, there is no indication […]

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My Outreachy Internship with Open Australia Foundation

By Hisayo Horie | Published: October 16, 2017

Cross-posted from Hisayo Horie’s blog, our wonderful Outreachy intern for the last 3 months. Officially I finished my internship with Open Australia Foundation, and I already miss working with OAF so much. I learned so much about programing and development, as well as community centred technology, challenges, and most importantly where I stand and where […]

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People Have Problems Accessing Information

By Kat Szuminska | Published: September 26, 2017

‘Australia will ensure our information access laws, policies and practices are modern and appropriate for the digital information age.’ That’s the ambitious task that Attorney General’s Department took on with Open Government commitment 3.1 Information management and access laws for the 21st century, in Australia’s first Open Government National Action Plan. Attorney General’s Department saw a […]

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Hung parliament? There is a silver lining…

By Mackay Ash | Published: June 24, 2017

The latest election in the United Kingdom has resulted in a hung parliament – something we’re familiar with here in Australia. Our 2010 federal election ended in a hung parliament, with six crossbenchers holding the balance of power in an uneasy alliance with the Australian Labor Party. And our last election was so close that […]

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