Weekly Dose of Data Analyst #1 — What Policy are the Main Fight Ground for Australian Politicians in the Parliament?

I am curious about what are Australian Politicians mainly argue about in the parliament.

So I did some digging to find out the number of votes (also called divisions (https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/help/faq#division) done in the parliament related to different policy. My understanding is that if there more divisions are done for certain policy, that means the policy is more important as there will be more debates about it before each division.

One thing to notice is that the policy involved in this dataset will not include all policy made in the parliament as majority of the policy are not made by divisions (https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/help/faq#division-occur). But it will be a good indication of what policy do politics parties have a disagreement on.

Thanks to some volunteers from They Vote For You Organization. Many divisions happened in the parliament have been summarized into their respective policy. And I have summarized the number of divisions for each policy through their API. The results are indicated as the chart below. Please see the Tableau public worksheet for details.

On top of that, I have further categorized all top 40 policy. See below for each policy category’s percentages.

And here is the top 8 policy categories with the most divisions:

1.Natural Resources Policy (20%)

This is definitely the most fiercest battleground. Mainly, it’s about coal and mineral.

e.g. “ increasing investment in the coal industry” , “ Adani’s Coal Mine Proposal”

2. Welfare Policy (11%)

e.g. “ decreasing availability of welfare payments”

3. Refugee Policy (11%)

e.g. “increasing scrutiny of asylum seeker management” , “implementing refugee and protection conventions”

4. Climate Change Policy (11%)

e.g. “carbon tax” , “the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”

5. Energy Policy (7%)

e.g. “increasing investment in renewable energy” , “a fast transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy”

6. Government Transparency Policy (7%)

e.g. “increasing accessibility of government data and documents”

7. Environment Policy (7%)

e.g. “increasing accessibility of government data and documents”

8. Economic Policy (7%)

e.g. “increasing accessibility of government data and documents”

9. Others

In addition to the policy above, there are a few divisions done regarding national security and social policy (“same sex marriage equality”).

Please see my Tableau public worksheet for other policy category and their percentages.

Other than the reason mentioned before, another possible reason for some of the policy not showing here due to that division can only decide things on a federal level, some policies are decided by state government.

In summary, the policy regarding natural resources (coal to be more specific) are the main fight ground for Australian politician.

Please see my code in Github (File name: WDDA#1.py). The code will get these policy information through API from They Vote For You website and put them in JSON file for data visulisation later.