How Ian Macdonald voted compared to someone who agrees that the federal government should get rid of the Gold Travel Pass, which gives free domestic air travel to certain former politicians, such as former Prime Ministers

Most important divisions relevant to this policy

These are the most important divisions related to the policy “for getting rid of the Gold Travel Pass” which Ian Macdonald could have attended. They are weighted much more strongly than other divisions when calculating the position of Ian Macdonald on this policy.

Division Ian Macdonald Supporters vote

16th Feb 2017, 5:48 PM – Senate Parliamentary Entitlements Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 - in Committee - Get rid of gold pass

Yes Yes

Other divisions relevant to this policy

These are less important divisions which are related to the policy “for getting rid of the Gold Travel Pass” which Ian Macdonald could have attended.

Division Ian Macdonald Supporters vote

16th Feb 2017, 7:10 PM – Senate Parliamentary Entitlements Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 - in Committee - Gold Pass travel entitlement

absent Yes

16th Feb 2017, 6:43 PM – Senate Parliamentary Entitlements Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 - in Committee - Prime ministers

Yes Yes

16th Feb 2017, 6:18 PM – Senate Parliamentary Entitlements Legislation Amendment Bill 2017 - in Committee - Former PMs and the gold pass

absent No

How "voted consistently for" is worked out

They Vote For You gives each vote a score based on whether the MP voted in agreement with the policy or not. These scores are then averaged with a weighting across all votes that the MP could have voted on relevant to the policy. The overall average score is then converted to a simple english language phrase based on the range of values it's within.

When an MP votes in agreement with a policy the vote is scored as 100%. When they vote against the policy it is scored as 0% and when they are absent it is scored half way between the two at 50%. The half way point effectively says "we don't know whether they are for or against this policy".

The overall agreement score for the policy is worked out by a weighted average of the scores for each vote. The weighting has been chosen so that the most important votes have a weighting 5 times that of the less important votes. Also, absent votes on less important votes are weighted 5 times less again to not penalise MPs for not attending the less important votes. Pressure of other work means MPs or Senators are not always available to vote – it does not always mean they've abstained.

Type of vote Agreement score (s) Weight (w) No of votes (n)
Most important votes MP voted with policy 100% 25 1
MP voted against policy 0% 25 0
MP absent 50% 25 0
Less important votes MP voted with policy 100% 5 1
MP voted against policy 0% 5 0
MP absent 50% 1 2

The final agreement score is a weighted average (weighted arithmetic mean) of the scores of the individual votes.

Average agreement score = sum(n×w×s) / sum(n×w) = 31.0 / 32 = 97%.

And then this average agreement score