What this is
A factual, fully-sourced reference on Australian politicians and candidates — the federal Parliament, all eight state and territory parliaments, and announced candidates for upcoming elections. The goal is to help voters make informed decisions by gathering publicly available, verifiable information about where candidates stand, with a source link attached to every claim. This is an information resource, not a scorecard.
Editorial rules
- Every claim needs a source. Nothing is published without a citation — Hansard, an AEC disclosure, a party platform, or an on-the-record public statement that was actually retrieved. Entries lacking a confirmed source are omitted rather than guessed.
- Positions are recorded, never graded. We summarise what a person has said or done and link the source. No ideological score, no endorsement, no ranking. Readers draw their own conclusions.
- Public record only. Public statements, conduct, and sourced biographical facts — early life, education and pre-politics career, as stated by the cited source (typically the person's Wikipedia article). No ethnicity labels are applied and private belief is never inferred — faith is recorded where someone has publicly self-identified it, or where it is publicly reported and carries a citation, and never inferred from a name, ancestry or schooling.
- Citizenship = constitutional eligibility. The citizenship field records Section 44 eligibility only (a genuine legal matter), never heritage or origin.
- No inference from party. A member's position is recorded from their own vote or statement, not assumed from their party. Where a federal party platform is shown as a fallback it is clearly labelled as the party's position, not the member's.
What's tracked
Sourced positions across 28 issues: five federal issues (immigration, faith, economic nationalism, foreign policy & aid, s44 citizenship eligibility), three shared ones legislated at both levels (economy & tax, welfare & social services, workplace & industrial relations) and twenty state issues — conscience matters that produce named parliamentary divisions (abortion, voluntary assisted dying, gender & LGBTQ+ policy, religious freedom, free speech, drugs & law and order, gambling, hunting, sex work, First Nations & treaty, integrity) and core state policy areas (forestry, nuclear, housing, health, education, transport, energy, environment & water, animal welfare). Plus disclosed political donations, both to individual members and to parties, with a donor-information registry describing who each identifiable donor organisation actually is.
Recorded votes
Federal divisions come from Hansard, via the OpenAustralia Foundation's parsed record. State divisions come from each parliament's own record: Victoria's Legislative Assembly Votes and Proceedings and Legislative Council Minutes of the Proceedings, cross-checked against the daily Hansard; New South Wales Hansard, via the Parliament's own Hansard API; Queensland's Record of Proceedings; Western Australia's Assembly Votes and Proceedings and Council Minutes of Proceedings; South Australia's House of Assembly Votes and Proceedings and, because the Legislative Council's Minutes for this parliament are not published online, the Council's Hansard; and both Tasmanian chambers' Votes and Proceedings, checked name by name against the proofs held by the Parliament's search index. Each is shown as the record lists it: Aye, No, paired (federal Senate, NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania) or did not vote — the last meaning the member held the seat that day and is on neither list. The record says who was in the chamber, not why, so it is never an abstention. Where fewer than five members vote on one side, Queensland's standing order 106(10) records only the result, so those divisions show no one's vote. Western Australia's record prints no pairs, so a member paired there shows as did not vote. A presiding officer who by law gives only a casting vote (South Australia's Speaker and President, Tasmania's President) shows no vote rather than did not vote, and so does the member presiding at a Tasmanian division. By default a bill's second- and third-reading divisions are shown; an amendment appears only where it is listed with a reason. Which bill sits under which issue is an editorial choice, made bill by bill with a reason read from the second-reading speech. Each vote shows a plain-English summary of what the bill does. Nothing is aggregated — no party-line percentages, no attendance rates. The ACT and Northern Territory parliaments are not yet covered.
Where the data comes from
| Data | Source |
|---|---|
| Federal roster | AEC Tally Room (House) and OpenAustralia.org (Senate) |
| State/territory rosters | Parliamentary member lists, each roster carrying its own citation (shown on every card as “roster source”) |
| Election candidates | Party preselection pages, electoral commissions and reputable media — every candidate carries a “candidacy source” link |
| Positions | Hansard division records and Votes & Proceedings, committee reports, members' own statements, reputable media — cited per entry |
| Donations | AEC Transparency Register (member returns and party detailed receipts) |
| Portraits | Wikimedia Commons via each member's Wikipedia article, with OpenAustralia.org backfill; every portrait links to its source page |
Coverage — and honest gaps
Coverage is partial by design. A position appears only where it is concretely stated and backed by a retrieved source. Issues decided by named conscience-vote divisions (abortion, voluntary assisted dying, sex work, treaty, nuclear) have deep per-person coverage; executive-driven policy areas mostly surface ministers with sourced records. Newly elected members often have little public record yet — their cards fill in as they build one. Per-member donor data covers only donations made directly to a member; most political money flows through party returns, which are shown separately, and the AEC publishes itemised member receipts for House members only.
Reported vs. verified. Political-finance links that have been reported but do not yet appear in a published AEC return — for example donations or in-kind support from the most recent financial year, whose detailed receipts the AEC releases roughly eight months after year-end — are shown in a separate, amber-marked “reported · pending AEC disclosure” note on the relevant member and party views, never mixed into the verified donation totals. Each is clearly flagged as not yet verified and is checked against the primary AEC record once that return is published.
Corrections
Corrections backed by a stronger source always win. Send one, with its source, to the address under Contact us below.
Archived copies
Pages move and disappear, party pages especially after an election. Where the Internet Archive holds a copy of a cited page, an archived copy link sits beside the live one. The live link stays the citation.
Support our Work
The site is free to use and every record is researched by hand. If it is useful to you, see Support our Work for a one-off or monthly contribution through Buy Me a Coffee. A contribution changes nothing about any record: what is recorded is set by the editorial rules above.
Contact us
Questions, corrections backed by a source, media or business enquiries: AusPollieWatch@burnsleaoakmont.com. Follow @AusPollieWatch on X for new articles and updates.
Map boundaries
Electoral boundaries on the Map tab are © Commonwealth of Australia (AEC federal divisions; ABS State Electoral Divisions), used under CC BY 4.0 and simplified for the web. Districts are coloured by the sitting member's party family — an identification aid, not a rating. Where an electorate elects several members (a Victorian Legislative Council region, a Tasmanian division), it is coloured by the family holding the most of its seats, or left neutral on a tie. The Victorian Legislative Council map joins each region's 11 districts, as the Victorian Electoral Commission lists them.
Postcodes and suburbs
The electorate finder (Electorates, and a postcode typed into the main search) and the postcode pages use the Australian Bureau of Statistics' ASGS Edition 3 allocation files — postal areas, suburbs and localities, and the 2025 federal and state electoral divisions — with the 2021 Census mesh block counts, under CC BY 4.0. Victoria's Legislative Council regions are those the Victorian Electoral Commission lists for each district. Postcodes and suburbs do not follow electoral boundaries, so each electorate is shown with the share of the area's residents living in it; for your own address, your enrolment with the electoral commission is the final word.
Privacy
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