When politicians vote in parliament, you won’t see the breakdown of votes reported in the media unless it’s a prominent policy.

To find out how your representative voted on an issue it’s currently pretty tricky. You have to track down the proceedings on the parliament house website and then work out how the question has been phrased so you can determine what an aye or no means in that context.



A new website, launched on Tuesday, aims to demystify the voting process.



Built by the non-profit OpenAustralia Foundation, They Vote For You shows the outcome of every vote in the Senate and House of Representatives. It also lets you see voting patterns by politician, when they vote against their own party, and offers descriptions of divisions in plain English.

Matthew Landauer, one of the OpenAustralia founders, said he hoped it would enable people to check if their representatives are voting in their constituents’ interests.

“How people vote in parliament is like an open secret,” he said.

“All the information is in the public domain but its incredibly hard to understand how your representative is voting on your behalf.”

Landauer said it would allow people to better hold politicians to account.

“What politicians say is what everyone concentrates on. What really matters is how they vote in parliament because that’s the stuff that makes our laws.”

“If they say one thing and then vote another way and this isn’t reported then we have a problem.”

The site also allows the creation of “policies”, groups of votes for or against certain topics or things. For example, this one shows all votes for or against an emissions trading scheme.

Politicians’ attendance at votes is also recorded, information Guardian Australia has previously used to show that Clive Palmer has the lowest attendance at votes in parliament.