How this works
What politicians say and what they do are both matters of public record. Public Matter puts the two side by side for the ACT Legislative Assembly, so anyone can see them without digging through Hansard, party websites and election results. It doesn’t rate members or tell you how to vote.
Votes
When the Assembly divides, the names of members voting Aye and No are recorded. We take those names from the Minutes of Proceedings and Hansard exactly as printed, check that the names add up to the printed totals, and link each vote to its page. Most questions are decided on the voices, without names, so there is no individual record for them. We never infer how a member voted from their party.
Issues
An issue groups recorded votes that were about the same thing, such as calls for more public transport than the government has planned. Each issue is worded as exactly what was voted on, and for every vote we say which side counts as “for” the issue and why. We then count how often each MLA voted on that side. The words “always” and “mostly” only restate those counts, and we don’t use them for fewer than three votes.
Many recorded votes are on amendments. Voting against an amendment can mean “not like this” or “not funded yet” rather than opposition to the idea, so each issue page says so, and each vote’s summary says whose proposal it was. Issues and summaries are drafted with AI help from Hansard and marked “Not yet checked” until a person has compared them with the record.
Promises
A promise is recorded only with the member’s or party’s own words, the date, and a link to where it was published. Whether it has been kept is marked only when there is evidence, and the evidence is linked. Software may suggest which votes or documents relate to a promise; a person checks every link before it appears.
Community views
Surveys, panels, consultations and official statistics measure different things. Each finding is labelled by how it was collected, and figures from different kinds of evidence are never combined. Petitions and consultations show what participants said, not what everyone thinks.
Checking
Records marked “Not yet checked” were imported automatically and match their source as far as the software can tell, but a person hasn’t yet compared them with the original. Anything found to be wrong is corrected and the correction noted.
Corrections and right of reply
If something here is wrong, it will be corrected and the correction noted on the page. Any MLA can send a short statement about any vote or issue, and it will be shown beside it, in their words. A contact address for corrections will be published before the site launches.
Who’s behind this
Public Matter is an independent, self-funded civic project, founded and funded by Mitch Porteous. My work, from community-led city building to the tools I’ve built, is about giving people the information and tools to act. I built this because how our elected representatives vote is a public matter, but finding out takes hours of reading Hansard.
I’m not a member of any political party. Public Matter isn’t affiliated with any party or candidate, and none of them funds or directs it. Every member and party is shown the same way. There are no ads, no paid placements, and no data sold. I’m accountable for everything on this site.
Sources and permissions
Assembly records © ACT Legislative Assembly, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Election results © ACT Electoral Commission. ACT Wellbeing Framework data from the ACT Government open data portal. Promises are quoted from party and candidate websites as they stood during the 2024 campaign, through copies kept by the Internet Archive. This preview is not yet public while permission to publish is confirmed with each publisher.