How James McGrath voted compared to someone who agrees that the federal government should ensure that Australian sovereignty always comes first when signing trade agreements so that the government can protect Australian interests (including its workforce and industries) without risking legal action from foreign investors under provisions such as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses

Most important divisions relevant to this policy

These are the most important divisions related to the policy “for protecting Australian sovereignty in trade agreements” which James McGrath could have attended. They are weighted much more strongly than other divisions when calculating the position of James McGrath on this policy.

Division James McGrath Supporters vote

12th Nov 2018, 12:17 PM – Senate A Fair Go for Australians in Trade Bill 2018 [No. 2] - Second Reading - Agree with bill's main idea

No Yes

17th Oct 2018, 11:30 AM – Senate Customs Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation) Bill 2018 - in Committee - Commencement

No Yes

16th Oct 2018, 6:49 PM – Senate Customs Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation) Bill 2018 - in Committee - Commencement

No Yes

Other divisions relevant to this policy

These are less important divisions which are related to the policy “for protecting Australian sovereignty in trade agreements” which James McGrath could have attended.

Division James McGrath Supporters vote

17th Oct 2018, 12:32 PM – Senate Customs Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation) Bill 2018 and another - in Committee - Sunset clause

No Yes

19th Apr 2016, 7:29 PM – Senate Motions - Steel Industry - Support local industry

absent Yes

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

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) = 0.5 / 81 = 1%.

And then this average agreement score