Today is a big milestone. We are the first website to make the Register of Senators’ Interests available online. This important public document until now has only been available to the small number of people who were able to visit the office in Canberra where the documents are held. In the Register each Senator declares information of financial interests, stocks and shares held, gifts received over a certain value, and memberships of Clubs and Associations.
The register is available on each Senator’s page. For example, have a look at the Register for Senator Judith Adams.
As soon as we can we will also make the Register of Members’ Interests available online, the equivalent document for the Representatives. Our main obstacle right now is getting our paper copy of the register scanned. If you have access to a bulk scanner and can help please contact us.
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4 Comments
Hmmm. While it is useful to be able to go to a parliamentarian and then look up interests, it would be just as useful to go to the interest and look up the parliamentarians.
If the information underlying those pages is held in a database, then such reverse lookups should be trivial.
Hmmm. If you could categorize the companies by sector, then going from sector to parliamentarians would be even more powerful.
Dave – Absolutely. Getting the register online in its current form is but the first step. We’re working on a transcription application which will allow us to transcribe the document into machine readable form which will allow all the kinds of things that you’re talking about. See an earlier blog post for more information.
Thanks for all the great work Matthew. I think I have access to a bulk A4 scanner if it is of any help to you.
Cheers
Ruben
Thanks everyone for the scanning offers! The register is being scanned this week. Yay!