How Simon Birmingham voted compared to someone who agrees that the federal government should increase transparency requirements for political parties (for example, requiring full and prompt disclosure of any political donations on easy-to-search public websites)

Most important divisions relevant to this policy

These are the most important divisions related to the policy “for increasing political transparency” which Simon Birmingham could have attended. They are weighted much more strongly than other divisions when calculating the position of Simon Birmingham on this policy.

Division Simon Birmingham Supporters vote

11th Mar 2009, 12:19 PM – Senate Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008 [2009] - Second Reading - Agree to 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 political transparency” which Simon Birmingham could have attended.

Division Simon Birmingham Supporters vote

16th Oct 2023, 4:03 PM – Senate Motions - Parliamentary Standards - Lobbyists

absent Yes

22nd Mar 2023, 3:47 PM – Senate Documents - Leader of the Government in the Senate - Order for the Production of Documents

absent Yes

3rd Aug 2022, 3:47 PM – Senate Committees - Senators' Interests Committee - Reference

absent Yes

2nd Dec 2021, 11:08 AM – Senate Electoral Legislation Amendment (Annual Disclosure Equality) Bill 2021 - in Committee - Lower disclosure threshold to $1K

No Yes

30th Nov 2020, 8:05 PM – Senate Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021 - in Committee - ANAO funding

No Yes

24th Feb 2020, 4:11 PM – Senate Motions - Parliament - Transparency

absent Yes

12th Nov 2018, 3:49 PM – Senate Motions - Political Donations - Increase disclosure requirements

absent Yes

16th Aug 2018, 12:06 PM – Senate Motions - Donations to Political Parties - Disclosure

No Yes

17th Aug 2017, 12:19 PM – Senate Committees - Select Committee into the Political Influence of Donations - Appointment

No Yes

3rd Dec 2013 – Senate Motions - Political Donations - Disclosure and ban on overseas donations

absent Yes

How "voted almost always 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 1
MP absent 50% 25 0
Less important votes MP voted with policy 100% 5 0
MP voted against policy 0% 5 4
MP absent 50% 1 6

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) = 3.0 / 51 = 6%.

And then this average agreement score