Restoring integrity to Australian governance requires more than just substantive law reform, such as tightening laws that regulate lobbying and campaign finance and increasing the powers of specialised integrity institutions. It also requires the powers of the cornerstone institution of Australia’s integrity system – Parliament – to be restored.

Drawing on insights from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan and Kyrgyzstan, this report connects the global decline of democracies to digital disruption and calls for strengthened regulatory frameworks along with its enforcement to prevent monied interests and hidden actors from influencing the outcome of democratic elections.

Digitisation of elections in Australia induces new vulnerabilities that malign foreign entities can exploit to subvert our democratic sovereignty. Despite this threat landscape, according to this paper, Australia’s digital-analogue hybridity safeguards federal elections from hard cyber security risks that might seek to directly tamper with votes and data.