Last month Henare and I were in Hobart for linux.conf.au. We met lots of really nice people working on a dizzying array of interesting projects. Linux.conf.au is Australia’s biggest conference for people building and using Free and Open Source Software. People come from all over the world to be there. Henare and Matthew from the […]
Since August 2016, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has been refusing to process the valid Freedom of Information requests they receive from people using Right To Know. At least two of the people who have had their requests blocked have lodged complaints to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). One of them is […]
Most people I speak to about making Freedom of Information requests think it’s too difficult to waste time on—it’s for lawyers, not them. When I’ve seen our FOI system presented in a teaching context, the clear message is ‘FOI is too hard, too slow, and too expensive’. The message has sunk in, including with journalists, […]
On November 13, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) wrote to the Australian Government http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/Australia%20-%20Steven%20Kennedy%20-%20November%202016.pdf “This letter is to inform you that, the Government of Australia has now acted contrary to the OGP process for three consecutive action plan cycles (2014, 2015 and 2016).” Australia is now at the final stages of preparing an action plan. […]
Right To Know makes it simple for you to request information from any public authority in Australia. Sometimes you might want to ask the same question but to lots of different public authorities at once. Right To Know can help you there too, with batch requests. Batch requests let you write one request that gets […]
Attendance levels in Parliament vary a lot. With the 45th Parliament just a few weeks in, our parliamentary vote tracking website They Vote For You is currently listing some federal politicians with 100% attendance and some with as low as 38% attendance. But what do these figures actually tell us and how accurate are they? […]
Is it safe for your children to swim in the river? How much did your council spend on that fancy new mobile app? Will we be building better public transport? How much graffiti is being reported in your area? What really happened to those stranded whales you heard about? Australia’s state and local governments create […]
Today the ABC reports “Tax Office imposes blanket ban on FOI requests via Right To Know website”. In the article the OpenAustralia Foundation’s response provides the context of the Australian Tax Office’s (ATO) refusal to process valid FOI requests made through the Right To Know. We hope to see the ATO continue to process your requests, as they […]
Firstly, thank you for visiting They Vote For You! We currently have over a hundred policies that you can use to explore how your representatives vote on particular issues. But what if something’s missing that you really care about? And why isn’t it there already? Here are three possible reasons why we may not have […]
They Vote For You now has over one hundred policies to help us keep track of how our representatives are voting on our behalf! They range from whether to have a Royal Commission into banking to whether to legalise same-sex marriage, and you can find them all on your representative’s voting record. For example, here’s […]
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