Anonymity isn’t a setting here — it’s the design.

Who we are

Australia Speaks is operated by Ryan Turner, a sole trader, trading as Australia Speaks (ABN 56 765 260 369), based in Victoria, Australia. When this policy says “we”, that’s who it means. You can reach us at hello@australiaspeaks.au.

This policy covers the Australia Speaks mobile app, the API behind it, and this website. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). Australia Speaks is small enough that parts of the Act may not strictly apply to us yet — we follow the APPs anyway, because for a civic tool that’s the bar.

1. Your vote carries no identity

When you vote on a bill, the app adds one to a national count for that bill — Yes, No or Impartial. That count is all we keep. There is no per-vote record, no ballot row, no timestamp-and-choice pair, and no column anywhere in our database that links a person, device or account to a choice. A complete copy of our data could not reveal how you voted, because that fact is never written down.

Your own choice is kept only on your device, so the app can show you what you picked and how it compared. Leader ratings work the same way — a count, never a name. We do record that you voted on a bill (see below), so you can’t vote twice, but never how.

Tallies are national only. We don’t break the vote counts down by state or territory, because in small regions a breakdown could narrow down an individual.

2. Accounts are optional

The first time you open the app it registers an anonymous device identity — a random identifier that carries no name, email, phone number or advertising ID. That is enough to read, follow topics and vote. You are never asked to upgrade it, and nothing is held back if you don’t.

If you want your place to follow you to a new phone, you can create an account with an email address and password, or use Sign in with Apple or Sign in with Google. Here is exactly what an account does and doesn’t link:

• •It links: your email (or Apple/Google identity), your home state or territory, the topics you follow, the list of which bills you have voted on, and a push token if you turn on notifications.
• •It does not link: how you voted on anything. The account sits on the identity side of the database; the vote counts sit on the other side with nothing pointing between them. Adding an account creates no new path from you to a choice.
• •Apple and Google sign-in tells us only that you signed in, plus a stable sign-in ID and an email address (Apple may give us a private relay address instead of your real one). We match accounts only by that sign-in ID — never by email — so nobody can attach themselves to your account by knowing your address.
• •Passwords are stored as a one-way hash (argon2id). We never see or store the password itself, and we never email it to you.

3. What we collect, and why

In the app

• •An anonymous device identity — so the app can remember your settings and stop the same device voting twice on the same bill.
• •Your home state or territory, if you choose one — stored with your identity. Not your address, postcode or precise location. We don’t collect location data at all.
• •That you voted on a bill, and roughly when — so you can’t vote twice and can be shown the outcome. Never the choice.
• •Topics you follow and your settings — so the app can show you the bills you care about. Never linked to a vote.
• •A push notification token — only if you turn notifications on, and only so we can tell you when a bill you follow is decided. Turn notifications off and it is no longer used.
• •Account details — only if you create an account: your email address and a password hash, or your Apple/Google sign-in ID. Used to sign you in, verify your email and reset your password. We also keep a short log of sign-in attempts (success or failure, time) to lock out password guessing.

When you contact us

• •Early-access list — your email address and, if you tell us, how you’d like to use the app. Used only to contact you about early access.
• •Support email — whatever you send us, kept only as long as we need it to help you.

Automatically, when the app talks to our server

• •Standard server logs — IP address, time and the request made — kept briefly for security and to keep the service running (for example, to rate-limit abuse). Logs record that a request happened, not its contents, so a vote’s choice is never written to a log — and logs are never joined to accounts or tallies.

That is the whole list. There is no advertising SDK, no analytics SDK and no third-party tracker in the app.

4. How we use it

• •To run the app: show you bills, let you vote once per bill, remember what you follow, and sign you in if you have an account.
• •To publish honest national tallies — counts only.
• •To send the notifications you asked for, and account emails (verify your address, reset your password, tell you if someone tried to register with your address).
• •To keep the service secure and stop people gaming the counts.
• •To reply when you write to us.

We don’t use your data to build a profile of your politics, to tailor what you see, or to market anything to you. Everyone sees the same bills and the same three perspectives.

5. Where it lives, and for how long

Our server and database run on a virtual private server in Australia, in a Sydney data centre operated by DigitalOcean, with Cloudflare in front of it for TLS and abuse protection. Backups stay on Australian infrastructure. We don’t move your data overseas to store it.

Retention

• •Account and device data — kept while you use Australia Speaks, and removed when you delete your account. Deleted data also falls out of backups as they roll over (within a couple of weeks).
• •Aggregate tallies — kept indefinitely. They are the record, and they contain no one.
• •Sign-in attempt logs and server logs — kept briefly, then discarded.
• •Early-access list — until we’ve told you the app is open, or until you ask to be removed, whichever is first.
• •Deletion record — when you delete your account we keep an ID-only note that a deletion happened (no email, no name) so we can show we honoured it.

6. Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information, ever. We don’t share it with advertisers, data brokers, political parties, campaigns or researchers. The only organisations that touch it are the providers we need to run the service:

• •DigitalOcean — hosts the server and database (Sydney).
• •Cloudflare — carries traffic between you and our server, and hosts this static website. Like any network provider it sees connection metadata as it passes through.
• •Apple and Google — only if you choose Sign in with Apple or Google, and only to verify that sign-in. They don’t learn what you do in the app. Apple and Google also deliver push notifications if you turn them on.
• •Anthropic — generates bill summaries and perspectives from public Parliament text (see next section). No user data is sent to Anthropic.

We would disclose information if the law required it — but because we don’t hold how anyone voted, there is nothing we could hand over that reveals it. If we add a provider, this page will say so.

7. AI-generated content

The neutral summaries and the three perspective panels are generated with Claude models from Anthropic, then checked by a person before publication. The input is the bill text and related material from the Parliament of Australia, which is public. Nothing about you — not your votes, your topics, your account or your device — is ever sent to Anthropic or any other AI provider.

8. What we don’t do

• •We don’t record how you vote against anything that identifies you. We can’t — the table doesn’t exist.
• •We don’t sell or share your data. We take no advertising money, so there are no ad trackers.
• •We don’t build a profile of your politics or personalise the bills and perspectives you see.
• •We don’t collect your location, contacts, photos or anything else the app doesn’t need.
• •We don’t require an account, and we don’t nag you to make one.

9. Your rights

• •Delete everything, yourself. In the app, open your Account screen and choose Delete account. This removes your email or sign-in identity, password hash, sessions, home state, followed topics, push token and the record of which bills you voted on. The aggregate tallies are untouched — they never referenced you. You can also email us and we’ll do it for you.
• •Access and correct. The app shows you what your account holds. If you want a copy or something is wrong, email us and we’ll sort it.
• •Leave the early-access list at any time by replying to any email from us, or emailing us.
• •If you never made an account, there is nothing on our server that identifies you. Uninstalling the app ends the relationship.
• •Complain. Write to us first and we’ll respond within 30 days. If you’re not satisfied, you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

10. Children

Australia Speaks is about federal legislation and is not directed at children. It is intended for people aged 16 and over. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16; if you believe a child has created an account, email us and we will delete it.

11. Security

Everything travels over HTTPS. Passwords are hashed with argon2id and never stored in the clear. Session tokens are stored only as hashes, expire, and can be revoked — resetting your password signs out every device. Verification and reset links work once and expire quickly. Repeated failed sign-ins lock the account for a short time. And the strongest protection is structural: the data that would hurt most if it leaked — who voted which way — is never collected in the first place.

12. This website

australiaspeaks.au is a set of static pages. We run no analytics on it, set no cookies of our own, and host the fonts ourselves so your browser makes no third-party requests to load a page. The site is served by Cloudflare, which keeps ordinary request logs to deliver and protect it. If you send us an early-access request, we use those details only to contact you about early access. The /verify-email and /reset-password pages send only your one-time link token (and, for a reset, your new password) straight to our API over HTTPS; nothing is stored by the page.

13. Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or how we use it, we’ll update this page, change the date at the top, and — for anything material — tell you in the app before it takes effect. We won’t quietly weaken the promise in section 1. It is the product.

14. Contact

Privacy questions, access or deletion requests, or anything else: hello@australiaspeaks.au. Australia Speaks is operated by Ryan Turner (sole trader, trading as Australia Speaks, ABN 56 765 260 369), Victoria, Australia.