Contact your MP

Contact your MP is its own page type. Create it from Pages → Add new page when you want supporters to look up their MP and email them. New organisations do not get one automatically — you add it when you need it.

Set the page up

1. Create the page

   Go to Pages → Add new page and choose Contact your MP. Give it a title and slug, then create it. Publish it, and add it to your navigation if you want it in the menu — creating a page does not put it there.

2. Write starter letters

   On the page editor, Write your own email is already in the letters list — a blank starter supporters can fill in, already framed with Dear {{mp_name}} and Yours sincerely plus their name. Add a letter and that same frame is in the body for you. Campaign letters you write only need the argument — we add the greeting and sign-off when the supporter opens the composer, so you will not get two. Placeholders you can drop in:

   {{mp_name}}, {{electorate}}, {{postcode}}, {{supporter_first_name}}, {{supporter_last_name}}.

   A campaign letter with a blank title, subject or body does not appear on the public page. Write your own email is always offered to supporters even if you remove it from the list.

3. Optional: limit to certain states

   Tick QLD, NSW and so on if this campaign is only for those constituents. Leave every box unticked to accept postcodes from anywhere in Australia.

4. Choose federal, state, or both

   Under Who they can contact, Federal MP is ticked already. Tick State MP to include the state or territory parliament. State houses is lower house, upper house, or both. Queensland, the ACT and the Northern Territory have a lower house only, so an upper-house tick does nothing there. NSW, Victoria, WA, SA and Tasmania have both.

   Parties choose who the letter goes to. Leave them all unticked for everyone. Tick Labor, Liberal, the Nationals, the Greens and so on to write only to those members, federal and state. Liberal National is the Queensland LNP, and Country Liberal is the Northern Territory CLP — tick those as well if you want them, because they are not covered by Liberal or Nationals. Other parties is everyone else. The list does not move when a government changes.

What supporters see

The default layout puts the title and intro on the left and the composer on the right. Theme authors can rearrange that in the Contact your MP page layout.

The composer stays in one container. The rest of the page does not reload.

1. Find your MP

   One field: their address. They start typing and pick it from the list, and the lookup runs as soon as they do. A street address sits in exactly one federal seat and one state district, so the letter reaches their own MP. We do not store the street address. Anyone who would rather not give it can use their postcode instead. If that postcode covers more than one electorate, they are asked for the street address after all.

   We look up the sitting members the page is set to offer. If more than one matches — a federal MP and a state MP, both houses, or several members of a multi-member seat — the letter is addressed to all of them, and they see the list above it. Each person on it shows their party and what they are, such as Federal MP for Wills or State MP for Bendigo West, so supporters know who they are writing to. If a seat is vacant, they are told so. If members exist but none are in the houses you ticked, they are told none of their representatives are included on this page. If members exist but none are from the parties you ticked, they are told there isn’t anyone here to write to, and which parties the page does write to.

2. Write your letter

   The composer opens with your first letter already in it. Your other letters sit as buttons above — one click swaps the text, and anything they have typed is kept if they switch back and forth. Write your own email is always one of them. If you have written no campaign letters there is nothing to choose between, so the buttons are hidden and they get the blank starter.

   Underneath the letter they add their name and email. That is where those fields live now: the letter is written by the time they are asked, which is the point people are most willing to give them. Until they do, the sign-off reads [Your first name] [Your last name], and it fills in as they type.

3. Send

   Send email opens a pre-filled draft in their own mail app; Open in Gmail and Open in Outlook do the same in the browser. They still press send themselves. That click is what we record in the CRM.

   The next screen does not claim the job is done, because we cannot see whether they sent it. It asks: Yes, I’ve sent it, or It didn’t open — take me back, which returns to the composer with everything intact so they can try another mail app. Confirming shows a thank you with share buttons, and Send another letter for anyone who wants to write again.

In the CRM

Opening the email app creates (or finds) the person by email and logs MP contacted on their activity — one entry for each member on the letter, with name, electorate, which letter they picked, and postcode. A federal seat and a state lower-house seat can both be saved on the person. A new postcode on that email updates the one we have on file. We do not keep a copy of the letter.

Pressing Yes, I’ve sent it afterwards marks that same activity — each of them, for a letter to several members — as confirmed. It does not create a second one, so nobody is counted twice. The activity feed reads “opened an email to” until it is confirmed, and “confirmed they emailed” after.

You can filter People by who has contacted an MP, by who confirmed they sent it, or by a specific Contact your MP page. Confirmed they sent it is the warmer list of the two — it is the people who came back and told you. Automations can trigger on MP contacted, including scoped to this page. Auto-tags on the page still apply.

Putting it on another page

Link to this page from home or the navigation. Contact your MP is its own page type — it cannot be embedded on another page. Theme authors can drop {% contact_your_mp %} into this page type’s layout — it reads the letters from the page.

What this is not

Local councillors are not included. You still cannot prove the supporter hit send in their own mail client — asking them is the closest we get, and they can skip the question. The letter goes to the electorate office address the parliament publishes, which for some members is a shared office address rather than a personal one. A few addresses are not published as a list: for federal MPs who do not put an address on their APH profile, and for NSW members, the letter uses the address pattern their parliament gives every office. Upper-house members in NSW, SA and WA represent the whole state, so no address leads to one of them, and senators are not included either. Automations cannot yet trigger on a confirmation specifically, only on MP contacted.