How Nick Xenophon voted compared to someone who agrees that the federal government should introduce legislation that increases consumer protections by, for example, encouraging competition

Most important divisions relevant to this policy

These are the most important divisions related to the policy “for increasing consumer protections” which Nick Xenophon could have attended. They are weighted much more strongly than other divisions when calculating the position of Nick Xenophon on this policy.

Division Nick Xenophon Supporters vote

26th Nov 2010, 12:39 PM – Senate Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 — Third Reading - Read a third time

Yes Yes

24th Nov 2010, 11:05 AM – Senate Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 — Second Reading - Read a second time

Yes Yes

12th Nov 2008, 11:38 AM – Senate National Fuelwatch (Empowering Consumers) Bill 2008 and related bill — Second Reading — Read a second time

No Yes

Other divisions relevant to this policy

These are less important divisions which are related to the policy “for increasing consumer protections” which Nick Xenophon could have attended.

Division Nick Xenophon Supporters vote

26th Nov 2010, 11:00 AM – Senate Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 — In Committee — No—disadvantage test

Yes Yes

26th Nov 2010, 10:24 AM – Senate Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 — In Committee - Merits review

Yes No

25th Nov 2010, 9:22 PM – Senate Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 — In Committee - Competition and Consumer Act and ACCC to apply

No No

25th Nov 2010, 9:06 PM – Senate Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 — In Committee — Transparency

No No

25th Nov 2010, 7:51 PM – Senate Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 — In Committee — Keep items and divisions unchanged

Yes Yes

25th Nov 2010, 7:47 PM – Senate Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2010 — In Committee - Spectrum and pay TV

No No

16th Mar 2010, 6:59 PM – Senate Trade Practices Amendment (Australian Consumer Law) Bill 2009 — In Committee - Sending private information offshore

Yes Yes

16th Mar 2010, 6:45 PM – Senate Trade Practices Amendment (Australian Consumer Law) Bill 2009 — In Committee — Additional fees for payment in person or in cash

Yes Yes

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 2
MP voted against policy 0% 25 1
MP absent 50% 25 0
Less important votes MP voted with policy 100% 5 7
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) = 85.0 / 115 = 74%.

And then this average agreement score