Tag Archives: senate

They Vote For You: The rebels of 2023 (so far)

Back in 2016, I wrote a post about the state of rebellion in our parliament. At that time, rebellions were quite rare. How things have changed! We now have several rebels in parliament, mostly from the Liberal Party. What does it mean to be a rebel? A rebel voter is someone who crosses the floor […]

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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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Hung parliament? There is a silver lining…

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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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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Submission for the “Inquiry into the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014”

    The Secretary of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee recently invited The OpenAustralia Foundation to make a submission on their Inquiry into the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements). These amendments make it harder and more expensive to argue the case if and when agencies refuse requests for information under FOI law. This makes […]

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They Vote For You

We believe everyone should know what our politicians do on our behalf in parliament. If we don’t, how can we hold them to account meaningfully? How can we begin to talk to them about what we want them to do? Trust in politicians is at an all time low. Yet we live in a time […]

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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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Federal Senate congratulates the OpenAustralia Foundation for its ‘Right to Know’ initiative

Earlier today a motion was presented to the Senate which notes the creation of the Freedom of Information request site Right To Know we launched yesterday and which urges the government to, “use the site, provide feedback, and support the Foundation in its aim of encouraging effective citizen access to government information.” We are very […]

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Who's blogging about OpenAustralia?

It’s only been live for a few weeks but already OpenAustralia has received great coverage and publicity from the online community. Here are some links to articles and blog posts about OpenAustralia: Kat and Matt are interviewed by Cameron Reilly on the TPN GDay World podcast – also Cameron blogged about OpenAustralia previously Blog post […]

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