OpenAustralia
making politics work
better for everyone
Matthew Landauer
Founder/Developer guy
@matthewlandauer
matthew@openaustralia.org

Australia is...

... a country

... a democracy

Winston Churchill
“It has been said that democracy is the
worst form of government...

Winston Churchill
...except all the others that have been tried. “

Winston Churchill
“It has been said that democracy is the
worst form of government except all the
others that have been tried. “

Democracy isn’t just...

Let’s look for a
moment at the UK

To publish what was
said in parliament
was illegal

Proceedings of the
Lower Room of the
Robin Hood Society

From 1771 it was
tolerated

You need to know...

So they do the right thing

we
So they do the right thing

Who is behind this?

A small bunch of
technology geeks
• Matthew Landauer
• Katherine Szuminska
• Nathanael Boehm

We’re doing this in our
spare time

Non partisan

In process of setting up
non-profit

Always looking for
volunteers

Contributions
• Daniel Kinsman
• Matthew Panetta
• Bruno Mattarollo
• Khan (Keith)
• Alan Liu

Hosting
• Andrew Snow
• Octopus Computing

Built on the work of
mySociety
• Richard Allan • Stefan Magdalinski
• Martin Belam • Dorian McFarland
• James Crabtree • Anno Mitchell
• James Cronin • Danny O'Brien
• Stephen Dunn • Etienne Pollard
• Yoz Grahame • Sam Smith
• Phil Gyford • Matthew Somerville
• David Heath • Tom Steinberg
• Francis Irving • Stuart Tily
• Ben Laurie • Julian Todd
• Mark Longair • Denise Wilton
• Tom Loosemore

How it all works

3 parts

Parser / Scraper

XML

Web Application

Parser / Scraper
• Ruby
• Mechanize - follow links with sessions
• Hpricot - HTML/XML parsing
• RelaxNG - xml schema language

Web Application
• php - majority
• Python - database loading scripts
• Perl - support scripts
• MySQL
• Apache

<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>
<hansard xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation=\"../../hansard.xsd\" version=\"2.1\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://
www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\">
<session.header>
<date>2008-11-12</date>
<parliament.no>42</parliament.no>
<session.no>1</session.no>
<period.no>3</period.no>
<chamber>REPS</chamber>
<page.no>0</page.no>
<proof>1</proof>
</session.header>
<chamber.xscript>
<business.start>
<day.start>2008-11-12</day.start>
<separator />
<para>
<inline font-weight=\"bold\">The SPEAKER (Mr Harry Jenkins)</inline>took the chair at 9 am
and read prayers.</para>
</business.start>
<debate>
<debateinfo>
<title>BUSINESS</title>
<page.no>1</page.no>
<type>Business</type>
</debateinfo>
<subdebate.1>
<subdebateinfo>
<title>Consideration of Private Members´ Business</title>
<page.no>1</page.no>
</subdebateinfo>
<subdebate.2>
<subdebateinfo>
<title>Report</title>

<motion>
<para>That this bill be now read a second time.</para>
</motion>
<speech>
<talk.start>
<talker>
<page.no>3</page.no>
<time.stamp>09:05:00</time.stamp>
<name role=\"metadata\">Bishop, Julie, MP</name>
<name.id>83P</name.id>
<electorate>Curtin</electorate>
<party>LP</party>
<in.gov>0</in.gov>
<first.speech>0</first.speech>
<name role=\"display\">Ms JULIE BISHOP</name>
</talker>
<para>In considering the bills comprising this stimulus package presented by the
government of some $10.4 billion, the
<inline ref=\"R4001\">Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Economic Security
Strategy) Bill 2008</inline>and cognate bills, it is necessary to put them in the context of the
global financial crisis which has been unfolding around the world for at least the last 12
months. Some have suggested that the global financial crisis has been caused by extreme
capitalism-whatever that means-or corporate greed, but that is far too simplistic an
analysis of the cause of the global financial crisis. It has come about because of a number of
failures, policy failure, regulatory failure and management failure, and the combination
has created what one could describe as a perfect storm which has led to a crisis in confidence and
a situation where banks have become reluctant to lend to each other-in fact, banks do not
trust each other-so the whole flow of credit throughout economies has been frozen.</para>
</talk.start>
<para>As we all know, this began with the subprime crisis in the United States. This was a
result of some policy decisions. Firstly, money was easy to obtain. Between 2000 and 2003 interest
rates in the United States fell from 6.5 per cent to one per cent. Secondly, there were the
policies from successive United States administrations for homeownership, particularly among the
poorer demographics. When you combined this cheap and easy money with this push to ensure
that more people got loans for homeownership the result was that many people whose creditworthiness

<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>
<publicwhip>
<major-heading id=\"uk.org.publicwhip/debate/2008-10-23.3.1\" url=\"http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/
parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:chamber/hansardr/2008-10-23/0000\">
BUSINESS </major-heading>
<minor-heading id=\"uk.org.publicwhip/debate/2008-10-23.3.2\" url=\"http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/
parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:chamber/hansardr/2008-10-23/0000\">
Days and Hours of Meeting </minor-heading>
<speech id=\"uk.org.publicwhip/debate/2008-10-23.3.3\" speakerid=\"uk.org.publicwhip/member/6\"
speakername=\"Anthony Norman Albanese\" time=\"09:00:00\" url=\"http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/
display/display.w3p;query=Id:chamber/hansardr/2008-10-23/0000\">
<p>I present a chart showing the program of sittings for 2009. Copies of the program have been
placed on the table. I ask leave of the House to move that the program be agreed to.</p>
<p>Leave granted.</p>
<p>I move:</p>
<p class=\"italic\">That the program of sittings for 2009 be agreed to.</p>
</speech>
<speech id=\"uk.org.publicwhip/debate/2008-10-23.4.1\" speakerid=\"uk.org.publicwhip/member/427\"
speakername=\"Christopher Maurice Pyne\" time=\"09:01:00\" url=\"http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/
search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:chamber/hansardr/2008-10-23/0000\">
<p>I will not speak for long, but I think there are some points that need to be made about this
program of sittings for 2009, which comes on the heels of the program for 2008. The incompetent leader
of government business in the House has yet again managed to restrict the number of weeks of sitting
to 18 for 2009, on my understanding for this year and 18 for next year. I have been in this House much
longer than most of the people in the House, and I can tell you that most of the time that I have been
in this House the normal sitting period has been 20, 21 or 22 weeks of the year.</p>
<p>This is a government which prided itself at one stage on having openness, transparency,
scrutiny and accountability. The government even got the poor Governor-General in his address at the
opening of the parliament to give a speech about accountability and openness and a new era of
transparency; yet in 2008 it managed to limit itself to 18 weeks of sittings and in 2009 will manage
to limit itself to 18 weeks of sitting. It is not an open, transparent and accountable government; it
is far from it. The people of Australia expect us to serve our electorates and legislate, not to spend
18 weeks here when we should be spending 20 or 21 or 22 weeks. This is especially the case with a new

<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>
<publicwhip>
<major-heading>BUSINESS</major-heading>
<minor-heading>Days and Hours of Meeting</minor-heading>
<speech speakerid=\"uk.org.publicwhip/member/6\" time=\"09:00:00\">
</speech>
<speech speakerid=\"uk.org.publicwhip/member/427\" time=\"09:01:00\">
</speech>
<speech speakerid=\"uk.org.publicwhip/member/6\" time=\"09:06:00\">
</speech>
<speech speakerid=\"uk.org.publicwhip/member/427\" time=\"09:06:00\">
</speech>
</publicwhip>

All around the world...

Albania, Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, France,
Georgia, Kenya, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand,
Netherlands, Romania, United Kingdom, USA

The future

So many possibilities

Register of Members’
interests

Voting

Committees

Bills

States

Video

Think about the
possibilities
• Follow a bill
• See amendments
• See it move from between Houses
• Watch the votes
• Give feedback to your representative
• See what other people think

Getting involved
• The software - it’s open source, you know.
• software.openaustralia.org
• email contact@openaustralia.org

Or start something
new!

OpenAustralia
@matthewlandauer
matthew@openaustralia.org