The big data company credited with helping Donald Trump win the US presidency has registered in Australia and plans to meet the Liberal Party next week, according to documents and a government official.
Cambridge Analytica, which has also said its "psychographic" methods helped the successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, has registered an Australian office in Sydney.
The presence of Cambridge Analytica in Australia underscores its efforts to capitalise on two high profile successes in the past year and enlarge its footprint in established Western democracies.
The person named in filings as the only shareholder of Cambridge Analytica's Australian operation, Allan Lorraine, confirmed in a telephone call he was working with the firm but declined to comment further.
The company's global chief executive Alexander Nix is scheduled to speak at an Australian data analytics conference next week and will be meeting Liberal Party officials.
"Senior Liberals will be talking to Mr Nix and the Cambridge Analytica team while they're out here in Australia, and will be interested to talk with them about their capacities and what they're offering people in the Australian political system," said Tony Nutt, party's federal director.
Cambridge Analytica says it uses "behavioural microtargeting" or combining analysis of people's personalities with demographics to predict and influence mass behaviour. It says it has data on 220 million Americans, two thirds of the population.
Its London-based parent company, consumer researcher SCL Group Ltd, says it formed Cambridge Analytica in 2013 to work on the US election. Cambridge Analytica worked for the campaign of failed Republican candidate Ted Cruz before signing on with Trump.
While profiling would-be voters and targeting messaging is nothing new, Cambridge Analytica achieved a degree of notoriety after media reports revealed the extent of its data gathering and apparent effectiveness.
"It is scary how accurate the information is you can glean from publicly available data," said Bela Stantic, an information technology professor who runs the Big Data and Smart Analytics laboratory at Griffith University.
ABC election analyst Antony Green questioned whether Cambridge Analytica's model, which involves analysing people's voting and party registration history, as well as social media profiles and other data, would work in Australia.
"They might find it useful but still most political professionals in this country would be of the view that campaigns are not about motivating people to vote, it's about banging the same message long enough that those who aren't interested hear it," Mr Green said.
