Hi there, we’re OnlyFacts

Our Story

OnlyFacts grew out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our team started Australia’s first and biggest websites tracking Covid data, to make virus facts easier to access and understand.

Those years taught us an important lesson: communities and businesses are hungry for clear, accessible data that affects lives and livelihoods.

Our work became a hothouse for learning the best ways to measure and communicate data that is in the public interest.

Now, we’re taking those lessons and applying them to other major issues.

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Our Purpose

OnlyFacts is a purpose-driven company. Our purpose is to:

• Give people the facts they need to make sense of the world around them
• Empower communities and organisations to be self-governing and make informed decisions
• Elevate fact-based public discourse

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Our Principles

As a team that tracks and communicates public interest data, we are guided by the following principles:

1. Be relevant: The best data is fast and local
2. Be accessible: Everyone should be able to understand
3. Earn trust: Be transparent with data and sources
4. Be clear: Logic should be self-discoverable
5. No projections: Focus on what’s happening now
6. No opinions: Break through media bubbles
7. Noise-free: Avoid angle-driven stories and commentary
8. Collaborative: Work with others

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Our Core Founding Team

• Juliette O’Brien OAM
  CEO (Chief Executive Officer)
  Data journalist based in Sydney

• Anthony Macali OAM
  CDO (Chief Data Officer)
  Data analyst based in Melbourne

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Our Decisions

In the process of building this website, we’ve had a few key decisions to make. We want to be completely transparent about them.

Why We’re For-Purpose and For-Profit

We measure and communicate data that affects lives and livelihoods. We believe this is both useful and important. If we’re right about that, we can and must deliver it in a sustainable and enduring way. We decided a purpose-driven company is the best vehicle to do that. That means purpose and profit are interwoven.

No Projections or Modelling

What we’re trying to say here is, our focus is to figure out and report on what is actually happening now. Not, what is going to happen.

Avoiding projections and modelling is more complicated than it sounds - especially when it comes to tracking climate data. Some assumptions are inevitable. For example, if we report emission reductions from land use, then assumptions and modelling will be baked into the data.

Also, it will occassionally be useful for you to see the projections that governments and other bodies are reporting. So we’ll include those when they’re relevant.

Finally, something we learned during Covid is an analysis that shows where we’re headed ‘if nothing changes’ can be really useful - even necessary - to show what the data actually means. So we’ll occassionally use these.

But in general, we’ll avoid using projections and models on this site.

There is certainly a time and place to report on what might happen in the future. But we find that just figuring out what’s happening now, is hard enough.

No Opinions

We provide facts, data and information. This is not a platform for opinions or assertions.

We recognise that editorial decisions are unavoidable. Which datasets should we tackle? What will we highlight? What words should we use? These are all editorial questions.

But our goal that guides these decisions is not to stir debate or convince you; it is to identify and communicate baseline truths, in an attempt to answer one deceptively simple question - what is happening?