Every contract, every register, every advice — published in full, at all three levels of government.
One of the six doors of The People’s Portal — the DAA’s key policy. One site, one login: everything your government knows, spends and decides, across local, state and federal.
Contracts. Every contract, at every value, published in full within 30 days of signing — council, state and federal. Not the summary line: the document, with price, schedule of rates, variations, milestones, performance clauses and termination terms. Purchases below contract size appear as transaction feeds, so the small spending is visible too. Commercial-in-confidence is narrowed to genuine trade secrets: a price is not a trade secret, and a company that will not have its price published does not have to bid for public money.
Registers. Lobbying contacts within 48 hours. Ministerial diaries weekly. Political donations published immediately, not eighteen months later. Grants and subsidies searchable by recipient. Media ownership and ultimate beneficial owners. Government advertising by outlet and department. And the asset and property register — what the Commonwealth owns, the natural companion to what it spends.
Advice and reports. Every review, commissioned study, consultant report and advisory council advice, published whether or not the finding suits the government that commissioned it. Taxpayers fund this work; burying it is a second cost on top of the first.
Correspondence and decisions. Briefs, submissions and decision records — the paper trail behind a decision rather than only its announcement. This is what makes the door a repository rather than a register: it holds the documents nobody thought to ask for.
Defence is included. Force structure, capability plans, base locations, alliance commitments, exercise outcomes and every defence contract. Protected, narrowly and with independent review: real-time operational movements in active conflict, cryptographic methods, and source identities. Foreign intelligence services already know Australia’s capabilities; the only people kept in the dark by defence secrecy are Australians.
The archive. Commonwealth records already enter the open access period after twenty years, and the National Archives releases about 98.5 per cent of them with no exemptions at all — but only on application, after an examination queue, two decades too late to hold anyone to account. Everything already examined and opened moves straight into the repository, searchable rather than sitting behind an application form. The unexamined backlog is worked through progressively, with the queue itself published so the public can see what has been done and what remains. The twenty-year rule stays as the backstop; the repository is the commitment to go further, as fast as examination allows.
The rule that governs the door. Publication is the default and secrecy the exception that must justify itself. The protected list is narrow and named — genuine trade secrets, personal privacy, real-time operations, cryptographic methods, source identities — and it applies to the item, not the era. Under that rule, freedom of information becomes a formality for a handful of items rather than a fight over everything.