Privacy Policy

Crossbench operates the website and related services at crossbench.io.

If you have questions about privacy, contact us at privacy@crossbench.io.

We collect only what we need to run the service and show electorate-level voting data.

• Email address — To create and manage your account
• Address information — Used temporarily to verify your electorate
• A one-way hash of your address — We never store your raw address in readable form — only a hash used for electorate matching
• Electorate assignment — Which federal electorate you belong to
• Voting history — Your Support, Oppose, or Abstain choices on bills
• Session information — Cookies used to keep you signed in
• Basic technical data — Browser, device, and log data for security and reliability

We collect and use your information to:

• Create and manage your account
• Verify the electorate you belong to
• Record your votes on bills
• Show aggregate and anonymised electorate opinion to MPs and the public
• Keep the platform secure and reliable
• Meet legal and operational requirements

Crossbench is designed to support verified democratic participation. Your vote helps build a real-time picture of constituent opinion by electorate.

To verify your electorate, we ask for your address. We do not store your raw address as a readable record. Instead, we store a one-way hash and use it to match your address to the correct electorate.

This helps us verify electorate membership while reducing unnecessary storage of personal information.

We store information in a PostgreSQL database hosted on Australian infrastructure.

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure — including access controls, secure infrastructure, and operational safeguards.

No online system is completely secure, but we work to protect your information responsibly.

We do not attribute individual votes to people by name when sharing results.

What MPs and the public can see:

• Aggregated vote results (e.g. "64% of Grayndler supports this bill")
• Anonymised electorate-level opinion data

We may share information with trusted service providers (hosting, database) who help us run Crossbench. We may also share or commercialise aggregated, anonymised vote and electorate data — for example, how an electorate voted on a bill. We will never sell personal information such as your name, email address, or address hash.

Crossbench uses session cookies only, including cookies used by our authentication system to keep you signed in.

We do not use advertising cookies or tracking cookies.

Votes are kept as part of the civic record so Crossbench can show how opinion changes over time. Voting history may be retained indefinitely.

If you close your account, you can ask us to delete your account information. We will remove personal information where lawful and practicable, while preserving the integrity of the civic record and meeting legal obligations.

You can ask us to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you
• Correct information that is inaccurate, out of date, or incomplete
• Delete your account and related personal information, where possible

To make a request, email privacy@crossbench.io. We may need to verify your identity first.

If you have a privacy complaint, contact us first at privacy@crossbench.io. We'll review your complaint and respond promptly.

If you're not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make a material change, we will take reasonable steps to notify you.

Privacy questions?