Press kit
OPAX makes the public record of Australian politics searchable and citable: what every MP said, how they voted, who funds the parties and where public money goes, in one place, with every item linked to its official source. Free, open source, non-partisan. This page has what a newsroom needs to describe it, check it and credit it.
In one line
Ask what Australian politicians actually said, see how they voted, and follow who funds them.
Boilerplate
Short. OPAX (opax.com.au) is a free, open-source site and app that makes the Australian parliamentary record searchable and citable: speeches, votes, bills, donations, grants and contracts, each linked to its official source.
Long. OPAX, the Open Parliamentary Accountability Exchange, puts the public record of Australian politics in one place. It holds Hansard speeches from the Commonwealth Parliament and the New South Wales, Victorian, South Australian, Queensland and ACT legislatures, every recorded federal division since 2013 with each member's vote, every federal bill since 2013 with a plain-English summary marked as machine-written, political donation returns from the federal and state electoral commissions with donors named as the commissions publish them, and federal contracts and grants. Every item links to its official source. Ask answers questions in plain English from retrieved passages only, and cites them. A read-only MCP service lets research tools query the same record. OPAX is independent and non-partisan, built in Melbourne by Jake Tracey and published by Noice Pty Ltd under an open-source licence (AGPL-3.0).
Key facts
Counts as at 10 November 2026, from the live collection statistics at opax.com.au/stats, which update as records are added.
| Collection | Count | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Hansard speeches | 963,671 | Official Hansard of each parliament |
| Recorded divisions | 14,229 | Official division records (federal via TheyVoteForYou and OpenAustralia; states from Hansard) |
| Federal bills | 2,994 | Parliament of Australia, with 4,747 bill texts and explanatory material |
| Federal grant awards | 8,354 | GrantConnect |
| Official releases | 7,004 | Prime Minister and ministerial transcripts and releases |
Speeches by parliament: Commonwealth 740,302; New South Wales 114,462; Victoria 50,744; South Australia 37,971; Queensland 10,228; ACT 9,964.
- Donations. Returns from the Australian Electoral Commission, the Victorian Electoral Commission and the Electoral Commission of Queensland, classified by industry, with individual donors named as the commissions publish them. Browse at opax.com.au/money/receipts.
- Contracts and grants. Federal contracts by supplier and agency, and federal and Queensland grant awards by recipient, program and electorate, with closed and non-competitive rounds flagged where the record says so. Contracts and grants.
- People. A page for every federal and state parliamentarian with speeches, votes, declared interests and expenses, from the registers of interests and the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority. Directory.
- Launched. Website 2026; iPhone and iPad app on the App Store from 8 November 2026. Android to follow.
What you can do with it
- Search the record by keyword, speaker, party, state, topic and year, and export results as CSV, BibTeX or RIS. Search.
- Ask a question and get an answer written only from retrieved records, each passage cited. When the record is thin, the answer says so. Ask.
- Follow the money on a map of donors, industries and parties, beside the grants and contracts that flow back. Recorded connections are shown side by side, never summed into a verdict. Money.
- Read a bill in plain English: what it changes, who sponsored it, how the parties divided and the speeches that argued it. Bills.
- Query by machine through a read-only MCP service for research tools and AI assistants, with a key from a free account. Reference.
Victorian election 2026
The Victorian election hub covers the 28 November 2026 election. The election page covers all 88 districts and 8 regions: published member records, previous winning margins from the VEC's final count, and the member's Victorian Hansard speeches and 2026 division records, each linked to the official record. Readers can type a suburb or postcode to find their seat. The page shows records only: no polls, predictions, rankings or donor records. Sources and limits are set out on the About page.
Authorised by Jake Tracey, Noice Pty Ltd, Level 6, 608/343 Little Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000.
How to cite OPAX
Cite the official record and credit OPAX for the finding. Every OPAX page shows the source it came from, so a reader can check it without us.
- A speech: Hansard, House of Representatives, 12 February 2025, via OPAX (opax.com.au), with the link to the OPAX record page.
- A vote: Division on the [bill name], Senate, 27 March 2025, via OPAX.
- A donation: AEC Transparency Register, 2024-25 annual return, via OPAX.
- An answer from Ask: quote and cite the records the answer cites, not the answer itself. Ask writes from retrieved passages and can miss context.
- A chart or table from OPAX: "Source: official records compiled by OPAX, opax.com.au", with the page link.
Citation formats, known limits and the collection method are on the Methods page. Bill summaries and topic labels are machine-written and marked as such; the official text is one link away.
Images
These may be used in coverage of OPAX with the credit "OPAX". They do not imply endorsement.
- Header image (PNG, wide): the OPAX mark and wordmark on navy.
- Avatar (PNG, square): the OPAX mark.
- Default share card (PNG, 1200 by 630).
- Share cards for individual pages, generated from the record: for example the Victorian election card. Any member, bill, grant or report page has one at the same address with
/og/in front. - Screenshots of the app are on the App Store listing.
Independence and corrections
OPAX takes no money from parties, candidates or campaigns and carries no advertising. It publishes no polls, predictions, scores or rankings, and it does not characterise individual politicians. Recorded connections do not establish influence. The data belongs to the public bodies that published it; each page names its source and, where one applies, its licence. The About page sets out the licences and what is kept off the public site.
If a record is wrong, email support@opax.com.au or open an issue on GitHub. Corrections to the data are the thing we most want to hear about.
Who makes it
OPAX is built by Jake Tracey in Melbourne and published by Noice Pty Ltd. The code is open source under AGPL-3.0 at github.com/jaketracey/opax. Retrieval and citation binding run on Progress Agentic RAG; the research portal tooling is shared with the open-source CorpusKit project. OPAX is not affiliated with any parliament, government agency or political party.
Contact
Interviews, comment, data requests and corrections: Jake Tracey, support@opax.com.au. Data extracts for a story (for example, Victorian donation returns by donor and year, or a seat-by-seat table) are sent as CSV, usually the same day.