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Gaps & layers — beyond people and parties

Summary of politics_tracker_gaps_analysis.md. The original scaffolding guide tracked jurisdictions, factions, and dossiers well; this document defined additional layers now largely implemented in the tracker.

← System design · Build approach →

What was already strong

  • Nine-jurisdiction structure and electoral mechanics
  • Party architecture and factionalism
  • Politician dossier format and “rising star” indicators
  • Crossbench ecosystem
  • Local politics filter (not full coverage)
  • Maintenance cadence and signal index
  • MkDocs / Git technical setup

Nine gaps — and current status

Gap Purpose Tracker location Status (May 2026)
1. Policy register What governments fight over policies/federal/, state starters Federal tier-1 done
2. Electoral / polling Margins and election timing seats/, jurisdiction hubs Federal AEC + all state/NT pendulums
3. Finance Donors, unions, aligned money finance/ Federal + NSW/QLD state shells
4. Media ecosystem Who shapes the narrative media/ National + 5 state press maps
5. Cross-jurisdictional Federal–state friction cross-jurisdictional/ Live tensions file
6. History Baselines and factional memory history/ Federal + 7 state/territory baselines
7. Networks Power clusters networks/ Four registers
8. Archive Resolved elections, departed leaders archive/ 2025 election, Voice, Dutton, Ley
9. Applications “So what” for your use case applications/so-what.md Template for you to fill

Policy register (detail)

Each policy entry tracks: issue, jurisdictions, government/opposition/crossbench positions, internal party tension, legislative status, electoral salience, last updated.

Federal tier-1 examples: housing, energy/climate, AUKUS, cost of living, immigration, industrial relations, NDIS, aged care, First Nations (post-Voice), integrity.

State examples: NSW planning; VIC infrastructure; QLD resources; WA GST.

Electoral layer (detail)

  • Pendulums after each election (not daily polling in v1)
  • Federal: uniform-swing benchmarks + crossbench 2CP table
  • Tasmania: Hare-Clark composition, not single-member pendulum
  • Redistribution and by-election notes on jurisdiction hubs

Finance layer (detail)

  • AEC annual donor disclosures (federal)
  • Climate 200, union–ALP affiliations
  • State EC near-real-time disclosure where available (NSW, QLD highlighted in spec)

Deliberately out of scope

  • All ~6,800 local councillors
  • All 55 federally registered parties
  • Raw press-release firehose
  • International politics except AUKUS, China trade, Pacific (as tied to Australia)

See primer — Part 8 for scale and file-count expectations (~350–400 files at full build; ~376 in current build).

  1. Hubs + event log + media shell
  2. Policy register (federal tier-1)
  3. Pendulums post-election
  4. Finance annual pass
  5. Networks and history baselines
  6. Deepen dossiers and state policies

Phases 1–4 of this repository followed that sequence — see approach.