About

What is here

• 134 national polls shown as a trend with confidence intervals, not one poll at a time.
• Party funding from the AEC Transparency Register, split into public money, named private sources, and money with no public source.
• 148,344 expense claims from IPEA, compared within each state rather than ranked nationally.
• 226 MPs and senators with attendance, floor crossings and positions across 368 policy areas.
• 384 lobbying firms and how many of their lobbyists previously worked in government.
• Stated party policyquoted from each party’s own website, with a link to the page.

How it is funded

It is not. There is no advertising, no paywall, no sponsorship and no party or campaign money. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed on this page before it changes anywhere else.

Independence

The site takes no editorial position. Where a number needs context to be read correctly — that Territory electorates are enormous, or that a disclosure threshold creates a reporting gap — that context is given as fact. What conclusion to draw is left to you.

Some things are deliberately not published. There is no “flip-flop” score for politicians, because when it was measured, 219 of 226 members qualified — it reflects how the underlying scoring works rather than anyone’s conduct.

Corrections

Mistakes will happen. When one is found it is corrected and the correction noted, not quietly overwritten. Every data change is recorded in version control, so any figure can be traced to when and why it changed.

To report an error, email [email protected]. Include the page, and the source showing the right figure if you have it.

Who runs it

Plain Politics is built and published by Ryan Nixon, an independent individual with no affiliation to any political party, campaign, lobbying firm or news organisation.

Reuse

Every dataset is downloadable under CC BY-SA 4.0, with source and caveats on each row. Journalists, students and researchers are welcome to use it — please keep the caveat columns, since a figure separated from its caveat is how accurate data produces inaccurate reporting.

The full method is on the methodology page.