Page Summary
find out how you can use the Ask Parliament mobile app to raise your concerns to Members of Parliament, including searching for existing questions, publishing your own question and upvoting existing questions. This page also has a frequently asked questions sections at the end of the page.
CONNECT TO YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES
Ask Parliament
A mobile phone app that makes it easy for you to gather support for a question and direct it to where it has the best chance of getting answered by an MP.
REPLY TO QUESTIONS
MP’ can search for the most popular questions directed to them.
- If the MP doesn’t reply, you may need to get more up-votes to increase its visibility.
- You will be notified when the MP or recipient has replied to your question.
- As the author of the question, you can assess their response. Anyone who up-voted your question will also be able to view the reply.
A SIMPLE WAY TO IMPROVE DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION FOR
MP’s & THE COMMUNITY
What’s the electorate talking about?
What are the most pressing community issues?
What do Australians care about?
The Ask Parliament app will be available soon.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, absolutely! You can up-vote for all the questions that are important to you.
DO:
Be specific – “How does the Australian Tax Office verify the accuracy of information provided by companies claiming Job-Keeper?”
“What claw-back mechanisms are in place to recover funds paid to companies that did not experience a fall in turnover?”
“When will the car park that you promised at the last election be built in [suburb]?”
“How many recommendations from the XYZ Royal Commission will be implemented by the government in the next 5 years?”
DON’T:
Don’t be broad – “why was x program such a rort?”
You can easily select to direct your question to:
– Your local MP
– Another MP
– A parliamentary committee such as Senate estimates
– A journalist or a Ask Parliament user (tag their handle)
– A public authority
No problem – Ask Parliament has a “Find my electorate” lookup feature in which we send your address to Geoscape (a location service jointly owned by state and federal Australian governments) to find out your electorate. The address is never stored by Ask Parliament.
You can allow others to add a tag or direct it if you’re not sure.
Simply click the share question button to spread the word online or copy and paste the web link (every question has a unique web link) to your email, phone message or other messaging app.
Share with people, groups or organisations who may support your question.
Encourage them to up-vote your question and to share the link widely.
Down-vote to dismiss a question indicates that you have read the question, and deem it irrelevant or unimportant to you.
Down-votes are implemented in the interest of balance, so that it demonstrates both how many people are interested, and how many are not interested in a question. This makes sure the results are more broadly representative of as many people as possible.
Down-votes and up-vote ratios can give a clearer picture of a question’s importance.
The power of Ask Parliament lies within a specific question gaining lots of up-votes, so it’s highly visible to MP’s to action.
If one specific question is published 20 times by 20 different users, the up-votes will be spread across 20 questions and as such will have less visibility or popularity and has less chance of being actioned.
This is another reason the share question function is so valuable. Up-voting for a question that you want to ask is more powerful than repeating the question.
Yes! The app will notify you.
Yes! The app will notify you. You can always manage notifications in your phone settings if you like.
