Australian Integrity Advocacy Organisations
@AusDisclosure, is the Twitter bot that lets you know when an Australian political party has realised they’ve forgotten to declare a donation, and when a politician has declared a new gift or business interest. Built by Nick Evershed, Guardian journalist.
The Australian Collaboration is a consortium of peak national community organisations representing social, cultural and environmental constituencies and interests. The main activities of the Collaboration are to act as a forum for the exchange of ideas and information, to carry out research, to publish essays and books and to provide educational materials on important societal issues.
Essays books and reports available here. Fact and issue sheets available here
Its “About” page says
“australianpolitics.com is the work of Malcolm Farnsworth. I am a (possibly) former secondary school teacher in Melbourne.
It began as a site for students of the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Political Studies course and originally appeared as VCEpolitics.com in 1995.
Over time, the site has developed into an eclectic archive of documents, speeches, data and assorted information, including audio files of significant events.
This site includes information on various ideas for Parliamentary reform.
Cluey Voter is a website providing below the line voting assistance. The voter enters general preferences as to support or otherwise of parties and independents, then the system generates a personal “how to vote” list for all candidates that the voter can then use in the polling booth.
Democracy’s Watchdogs is a new website presenting video conversations with Australia’s top former and current investigative journalists. The journalists provide a behind-the-scenes look at how they exposed some of the nation’s biggest scandals, crimes and systemic failings. The theme underlying the videos is that good journalism plays a crucial role in our democratic processes.
Our aim is to have between 20 and 30 investigative journalist’s profiles on the site. Each of these profiles will be featured on a ‘For students’ page that will have additional resources and questions that teachers and lecturers can ask of their students.
The founder of Democracy’s Watchdogs is Dr Bill Birnbauer, a former journalist with The Age, and an adjunct senior lecturer at Monash University. His contacts are as follows: E: Bill@democracyswatchdogs.org; FB: @democracyswatchdogs; T: @DemoWatchOrg.
Democratic Audit conducts Audits to assess Australia’s strengths and weaknesses as a democratic society. From early 2008 the Audit has been based at the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, with continuing input from researchers at ANU and other universities.
The Democracy4sale project analyses all political donations made to the NSW divisions and Federal divisions of the major parties, and more recently local government in NSW, and presents this data to the public in a simple website that sorts donations to political parties by industry category. The Democracy4sale project is an initiative of the Greens NSW.
Craig Thomler’s professional blog – eGovernment and Gov 2.0 thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective.
This website is devoted to e-government, electronic voting, online citizen engagement and similar topics.
This blog takes an interest in issues associated with Freedom of Information (FOI) and privacy legislation in Australia. It also includes comment about open transparent and accountable government and related issues generally drawing on developments in Australia and overseas.
The OpenAustralia Foundation is a pioneering charity whose vision is to transform democracy in Australia. Our mission is to give all Australians the tools they need to affect the change they want. We create technologies that encourage and enable people to participate directly in the political process on a local, community and national level.
We currently do this through our three websites OpenAustralia.org, PlanningAlerts.org.au and ElectionLeaflets.org.au. These websites aim at finding better ways of making government, the public sector and political information freely and easily available for the benefit of all Australians. This transparency aims to encourage and inform people about how they can make a difference.
- OpenAustralia.org is a non-partisan website run by a group of volunteers which aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their representatives in Parliament. More about them here
- Planning Alerts.org.au sends email alerts if building applications are made in your vicinity.
- Election Leaflets.org.au is a website dedicated to monitoring the content of election leaflets.The site encourages people to upload pictures of election leaflets circulated in their electorate, then allows readers to scrutinize those leaflets.
OpenAustralia.org is a Project website build by Open Australia that enables people to keep track of what politicians are doing and saying on our behalf in Parliament. “We believe that politicians work for us and that to ensure that we have a healthy democracy we, the public, need to be able to access and search the official Parliamentary records (Hansard) freely and easily.”
Public Interest Advocacy Centre
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) is an independent, non-profit law and policy organisation that works for a fair, just and democratic society, empowering citizens, consumers and communities by taking strategic action on public interest issues.
This webpage tracks the voting and parliamentary attendance record of current Federal politicians. Run by the OpenAustralia Foundation, the website format is based on a similar website that has been running for some time in the UK, “They work for you“. More useful in constituencies where votes are less locked in that in Australia, the site nevertheless offers useful information in a simple form for checking on political activity. The Guardian Australia wrote an article on the launch of the site, “They vote for you: How we’re taking back politics.”
Transparency International Australia
Transparency International Australia is the Australian national chapter of Transparency International (TI), the global coalition with a presence in over 80 countries. TI is dedicated to increasing government accountability and curbing both international and national corruption. TI believes that corruption is one of the greatest challenges of the contemporary world.
Whistleblowers Australia Inc. is an association for those who have exposed corruption or any form of malpractice, especially if they were then hindered or abused, and for those who are thinking of exposing it or who wish to support those who are doing so.
Whistleblowers Australia is a national organisation relying entirely on volunteers. Our members are whistleblowers and their supporters. We encourage self-help and mutual help among whistleblowers, and we support campaigns on specific issues such as free speech for employees and whistleblower legislation. We do not undertake formal advocacy on behalf of individuals.
Membership is open to anyone who supports the group’s aims. Our modest income, about $5000 per year, comes from memberships and donations. We publish a newsletter, The Whistle; all issues are available on their website.
Twitter # and @
#auspol – for federal political chat
#actpol – for ACT political comment and news
#nswpol – for NSW political comment and news
#ntpol – for NT political comment and news
#qldpol – for QLD political comment and news
#sapol – for SA political comment and news
#taspol – for TAS political comment and news
#wapol – for WA political comment and news
#gov2au – for information on Australian Gov 2.0 advances.
@AuSenate – for news and updates for the Australian Senate
@AboutTheHouse – News and updates from the official Twitter account of Australia’s House of Representatives
@ParlLibrary – Keep up to date with the Australian Parliamentary Library’s publications and events
@AUS_Hansard – the official twitter feed of Australian Hansard
@VicParliament – Official feed of the Parliament of Victoria.
@AssemblyWA – The twitter feed of the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia
@WALegCouncil – The Legislative Council is the upper House of the State Parliament of Western Australia