How Sharon Bird voted compared to someone who agrees that the federal government should substantially increase the cost of humanities degrees at university (that is, degrees focussed on the study of human culture and society) in order to discourage students from enrolling in the the subject area and instead enrol in other subject areas, such as mathematics

Most important divisions relevant to this policy

These are the most important divisions related to the policy “for increasing the cost of humanities degrees” which Sharon Bird could have attended. They are weighted much more strongly than other divisions when calculating the position of Sharon Bird on this policy.

Division Sharon Bird Supporters vote

19th Oct 2020, 12:27 PM – Representatives Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 - Consideration of Senate Message - Pass the bill

absent Yes

8th Oct 2020, 4:32 PM – Representatives Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 - Consideration of Senate Message - Agree with requests

absent Yes

1st Sep 2020, 8:09 PM – Representatives Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 - Third Reading - Pass the bill

No Yes

1st Sep 2020, 7:38 PM – Representatives Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 - Second Reading - Agree with the bill's main idea

No Yes

Other divisions relevant to this policy

These are less important divisions which are related to the policy “for increasing the cost of humanities degrees” which Sharon Bird could have attended.

Division Sharon Bird Supporters vote

1st Sep 2020, 7:31 PM – Representatives Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 - Second Reading - Keep second reading motion unchanged

No Yes

How "voted generally against" 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 0
MP voted against policy 0% 25 2
MP absent 50% 25 2
Less important votes MP voted with policy 100% 5 0
MP voted against policy 0% 5 1
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) = 25.0 / 105 = 24%.

And then this average agreement score