How Peter Whish-Wilson voted compared to someone who agrees that the Federal Government should amend the Marriage Act 1961 so that same-sex couples can marry under Australian law

Most important divisions relevant to this policy

These are the most important divisions related to the policy “for same-sex marriage equality” which Peter Whish-Wilson could have attended. They are weighted much more strongly than other divisions when calculating the position of Peter Whish-Wilson on this policy.

Division Peter Whish-Wilson Supporters vote

29th Nov 2017, 1:30 PM – Senate Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017 - Third Reading - Pass the bill

Yes Yes

20th Jun 2013, 11:28 AM – Senate Marriage Act Amendment (Recognition of Foreign Marriages for Same-Sex Couples) Bill 2013 - Second Reading - Agree with bill's main idea

Yes Yes

20th Sep 2012, 4:15 PM – Senate Marriage Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2012 - Second Reading - Read a second time

Yes Yes

Other divisions relevant to this policy

These are less important divisions which are related to the policy “for same-sex marriage equality” which Peter Whish-Wilson could have attended.

Division Peter Whish-Wilson Supporters vote

7th Feb 2013, 12:22 PM – Senate Motions - UK Marriage Equality Legislation - Congratulate UK PM

Yes Yes

11th Oct 2012, 12:11 PM – Senate Motions – State-based Marriage Equality Legislation – No Commonwealth challenge

Yes Yes

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 3
MP voted against policy 0% 25 0
MP absent 50% 25 0
Less important votes MP voted with policy 100% 5 2
MP voted against policy 0% 5 0
MP absent 50% 1 0

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) = 85.0 / 85 = 100%.

And then this average agreement score