Talk given at the Open Source Developer's Conference 2008 in Sydney on how www.openaustralia.org came about what it is and why you should get involved
- 1. OpenAustralia making politics work better for everyone
Matthew Landauer Founder/Developer guy@matthewlandauer
[email protected]
2. Australia is... 3. ... a country 4. ... a democracy 5.
Winston Churchill It has been said that democracy is the worst form
of government... 6. Winston Churchill ...except all the others that
have been tried. 7. Winston Churchill It has been said that
democracy is the worst form of government except all the others
that have been tried. 8. Democracy isnt just... 9. Lets look for a
moment at the UK 10. To publish what wassaid in parliamentwas
illegal 11. Proceedings of the Lower Room of the Robin Hood Society
12. From 1771 it wastolerated 13. You need to know... 14. So they
do the right thing 15. we So they do the right thing 16. Who is
behind this? 17. A small bunch of technology geeks Matthew Landauer
Katherine Szuminska Nathanael Boehm 18. Were doing this in ourspare
time 19. Non partisan 20. In process of setting up non-prot 21.
Always looking forvolunteers 22. Contributions Daniel Kinsman
Matthew Panetta Bruno Mattarollo Khan (Keith) Alan Liu 23. Hosting
Andrew Snow Octopus Computing 24. 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 25. How
it all works 26. 3 parts 27. Parser / Scraper 28. XML 29. Web
Application 30. Parser / Scraper Ruby Mechanize - follow links with
sessions Hpricot - HTML/XML parsing RelaxNG - xml schema language
31. Web Application php - majority Python - database loading
scripts Perl - support scripts MySQL Apache 32.
2008-11-124213REPS012008-11-12The SPEAKER (Mr Harry Jenkins)took
the chair at 9 am and read prayers.BUSINESS1BusinessConsideration
of Private Members Business1Report 33. That this bill be now read a
second time.309:05:00Bishop, Julie, MP83PCurtinLP00Ms JULIE
BISHOPIn considering the bills comprising this stimulus package
presented by the government of some $10.4 billion, the Social
Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Economic Security
Strategy) Bill 2008and 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.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 34. BUSINESS Days and Hours of Meeting
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.
Leave granted.
I move:
That the program of sittings for 2009 be agreed to.
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.
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 35. BUSINESSDays and Hours of
Meeting 36. All around the world... 37. Albania, Australia, Canada,
Czech Republic, France, Georgia, Kenya, Lithuania, Malaysia, New
Zealand, Netherlands, Romania, United Kingdom, USA 38. The future
39. So many possibilities 40. Register of Members interests 41.
Voting 42. Committees 43. Bills 44. States 45. Video 46. 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 47. Getting involved The
software - its open source, you know. software.openaustralia.org
email [email protected] 48. Or start somethingnew! 49.
OpenAustralia @matthewlandauer [email protected]
