The Charter

THE RORT answers to its readers and to no one else. It is self-funded and takes no advertising, sponsorship, donations, grants or subscriptions, so nobody with money in a story has a say in it. Nobody it reports on, and nobody acting for them, approves, edits or vetoes what it publishes.

The rule, in the method: ownership and funding

The Rort is an independent Australian public-interest news site and watchdog. We publish original investigations, analysis and context on what gets taken from the public: money, safety, privacy, rights, the right to know. Who took it, by which device, and where it landed. The work covers politics, corporate Australia, natural resources, housing, media ownership and health.

We do not make up stories. Every article is built from documents, and no case is published without at least one primary source: legislation, a court record, a filing, a regulator's own publication, an annual report or an official transcript. Anyone named adversely is offered a right of reply.

We also feature, embed and link to independent journalists, researchers and activists who hold power to account. We do not re-host or reproduce their work.

There is no advertising here. There are no sponsors, no partners and no commercial relationships. The rort is the target, not a party.

Most publications pile up articles until the archive becomes a haystack. This station runs the other way: every investigation is evidence, and the evidence feeds a persistent model of how power works in Australia. Name an entity in a piece and its dossier grows. Close a chain of evidence and a case file sharpens. The Watchfloor, the Docket and every dossier are read straight from that model on every build.

Nothing on this site is decorative. The Drain draws only conduits whose figure a cited article states, and any modelled figure is labelled MODELLED with its basis. If a number is on the screen, there is a source under it.