About us

For all its faults and foibles, our democracy is a profound gift from previous generations. Yet most people don't know the name of their representative, let alone what they do or say in their name.

We aim to help bridge this growing democratic disconnect, in the belief that there is little wrong with Parliament that a healthy mixture of transparency and public engagement won't fix.

Hence this website.

Who runs this site?

OpenAustralia is a website run by a charity, the OpenAustralia Foundation, and volunteers. We owe a great debt to a UK charity, mySociety, which built theyworkforyou.com which this site is based on.

The Australian Hansard is Copyright Commonwealth of Australia, and is used with permission. Images of politicians are Copyright Commonwealth of Australia and administered by AUSPIC.

If you're technically minded, we make all the OpenAustralia source code freely available. Do let us know if you want to help!

History

Back in 2004 Matthew Landauer and Katherine Szuminska were lucky enough to accidently find themselves at the launch of the UK site TheyWorkForYou.com at a nerdy techno conference, NotCon 2004. The talk inspired them hugely and they left with a desire to make this happen in Australia too. It took a few years, other people came on board to help and here you can see the fruits of their labour.

The project was kick-started in November 2007 when Matthew, supported by Rising Sun Pictures, was given the oppurtunity to take a week of paid charity leave to develop the first, very rough, prototype of OpenAustralia.

Volunteers on OpenAustralia.org

Tim Ansell Nathanael Boehm Lachie Cox Henare Degan Simon Elvery Ray Haleblian Matt Joyce Daniel Kinsman Matthew Landauer Rob Manson Bruno Mattarollo Wade Millican Matthew Panetta Sarah Stokely Katherine Szuminska Justin Wells

They did all this in their spare time, because they thought it was worth doing. And if it's worth doing, you might as well try to do it well.

Volunteers on TheyWorkForYou.com