Author Archives: Davispg
Another way to look at electorates
Have you ever watched Parliament on TV and heard the speaker say “the Member for Chifley has the call” and wondered, who is the member for Chifley (Ed Husic) and where is Chifley (NSW)? What about which seat is the most marginal (Corangamite, held by the Labor party by 0.28%), covers the most land-area (Durack, […]
A forecast is an educated guess
Reading Simon Jackman’s Guardian article Opinion polls tell us Labor can’t win it dawned on me I was reading another article discussing the seeming inevitability of a Coalition victory in September. What if Australians elect another hung parliament and Labor negotiates to form government (discussed here and here)? You may laugh off this as a possibilty, but the point is forecasts […]
Budget 2013-14: the budget reply language shifts to the individual.
Ah, the second Tuesday and Thursday in May. I find it is a wonderful time, the air is crisp and there is every excuse to sit inside, heater on, with a glass of my favourite beverage to watch on TV the budget speech on Tuesday and the budget reply on Thursday. Yep, I’m a budget night tragic, happily curling […]
Trivia special: 43 Parliaments, 71 Knights
While researching for a different article I’ve ended up exploring a range of publicly available data-sets searching for information.[1] This post is a bit of a trivia special sharing some of what I have found so far. Up to and including the 43rd Parliament 1,088 people have been members of the House of Representatives. Australia’s […]
How many House of Representatives votes don’t go to the big-four?
After reading a post by @mrteidt I was left with the question how many of the 13 million or so votes cast in the Federal Election do not make it to the big-four (Labor, Liberal, National, and The Greens)?[1] Reviewing statistics published by the Australian Electoral Commission I learned just over 10% of House of Representatives votes (1.3 million) […]
Which Federal political brand is mentioned the most online?
There are at least 12.1 million Internet subscribers in Australia (ABS). Today I asked myself which Federal political brand is mentioned the most online? Using Google search the major brands appear (in aggregate) 225,000 times in indexed articles between 1 Jan 2013 and 19 Feb 2013. The Labor brand dominates appearing 49% of the time […]
What makes something discussed within the House of Representatives news worthy?
With the first sitting period of Federal Parliament for 2013 now behind us, using Hansard as a source of data I’ve created a House of Representatives (HoR) word-cloud. After creating the word-cloud I noticed an acronym (IFAD), firearms, and guns featured, which was a result of debates on the International Fund for Agricultural Development Bill 2012 and the Crimes […]
A graphical view of what happens in parliament
I was looking for an excuse to liven up my blog entries with some graphics. I also thought Hansard provides a wonderful source of data on parliamentary proceedings. The two thoughts merged and here is a graphical view (using word-clouds) of the first sitting week of Federal Parliament for 2013. The data (words) for these […]
In September will voters choose “the devil they know”?
In September, Australia votes in a Federal election and the polls suggest an almost certain Coalition victory. However I have my doubts, influenced by the result of the 2007 NSW state election. In that election voters were dissatisfied with both major parties and, when the election was held, there wasn’t a flight to the opposition, […]
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