How Joe Hockey voted compared to someone who agrees that Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) debts - also known as HECS-HELP debts - should be indexed in line with the ten-year bond rate, capped at six per cent, instead of the generally lower rate of the Consumer Price Index (CPI)

Most important divisions relevant to this policy

These are the most important divisions related to the policy “for increasing indexation of HECS-HELP debts” which Joe Hockey could have attended. They are weighted much more strongly than other divisions when calculating the position of Joe Hockey on this policy.

Division Joe Hockey Supporters vote

25th Feb 2015, 10:21 AM – Representatives Higher Education and Research Reform Bill 2014 - Third Reading - Pass the bill

absent Yes

4th Sep 2014, 1:12 PM – Representatives Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014 - Consideration in Detail - Agree to the bill

absent Yes

4th Sep 2014, 12:40 PM – Representatives Higher Education and Research Reform Amendment Bill 2014 - Second Reading - Agree with the main idea of the bill

Yes Yes

Other divisions relevant to this policy

These are less important divisions which are related to the policy “for increasing indexation of HECS-HELP debts” which Joe Hockey could have attended.

Division Joe Hockey Supporters vote
no votes listed

How "voted generally 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 2
Less important votes MP voted with policy 100% 5 0
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) = 50.0 / 75 = 67%.

And then this average agreement score