About Public Matter
See what your MLAs did on the issues you care about, in two minutes.
Public Matter is an independent civic project. It draws on the Assembly’s official records and Elections ACT results, starting with the ACT.
How it works
Public Matter connects information that is usually scattered across parliamentary records, election results, government publications and archived campaign material.
Explore issues
See the parliamentary decisions associated with an issue, including how representatives voted and links to the original records.
Understand your representatives
Explore recorded votes, public commitments and parliamentary activity, with the underlying evidence available to check.
Explore elections
Understand election results, individual candidate votes and how preferences were distributed.
Understand community priorities
Explore published surveys, consultations and research, with clear information about who was surveyed and how findings were collected.
Where the information comes from
Public Matter brings existing public information together. It doesn’t run its own surveys or polls, and it doesn’t independently re-check the research behind every study it reports.
- Parliamentary votes: the ACT Legislative Assembly’s Minutes of Proceedings and Hansard, taken exactly as printed.
- Election results: Elections ACT’s published distribution of preferences for the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections, unchanged.
- Community views: published surveys and consultations, such as the ACT Government’s 2025 Community Priorities Survey and YourSay consultations, each labelled with how it was collected.
- Promises: party and candidate websites as they stood during the 2024 campaign, recovered through copies kept by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
- Official statistics: the ACT Wellbeing Framework, from the ACT Government open data portal.
Assembly records © ACT Legislative Assembly, licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Election results © ACT Electoral Commission. This preview isn’t yet public while permission to publish is confirmed with each publisher.
How we check information
Recorded facts
Election results and parliamentary votes are taken from published official records. Where available, links let readers check the original source. 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.
Interpretations
Parliamentary votes are not always straightforward. A vote on an amendment does not necessarily establish whether someone supports or opposes the broader policy. Interpretations are labelled “review in progress” until they have been checked against the official record.
Use of AI
We use software, including AI tools, to organise records and prepare summaries. Summaries and interpretations are a guide to the official record, never a replacement for it, and are reviewed before they are marked as reviewed.
What each kind of vote means
Every recorded vote is labelled with the stage it was taken at, read from the official question. Only the final vote on a motion or bill decides it. The others are steps along the way.
- Amendment to an amendment
- A vote on changing someone else's proposed change. It is a step along the way, not the final decision, and members often vote on wording or tactics here.
- Amendment
- A vote on changing the wording of a motion or bill. Voting against a change can mean "not like this", not opposition to the idea.
- Final vote on a motion
- The deciding vote on a motion, as worded at the time.
- Final vote on a motion, as amended
- The deciding vote on a motion after earlier votes changed its wording.
- Bill: agreed in principle
- The vote on whether a bill should go ahead at all, before its details are considered.
- Bill: final vote
- The vote that passes or rejects the bill, after any changes to its details.
- Budget spending line
- A vote on one part of the spending in an appropriation (budget) bill.
- Procedural
- A vote about how the Assembly runs its business, not about a policy.
- Question not printed
- Hansard records the division but not the exact question, so its stage can't be shown.
- Other question
- A recorded vote whose stage isn't one of the common kinds. Read the question as recorded.
More about our methodology
Recorded divisions and voice 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.
Every vote is labelled with its stage, such as an amendment, an amendment to an amendment, or the final vote, read from the question as recorded. “No recorded vote” means the member isn’t named in that division: they may not have been a member yet, or didn’t vote. We never treat it as an abstention.
How issues work
An issue groups recorded votes that were about the same thing, such as calls for more public transport than the government has planned. For every vote we say which side counts as “for” the issue and why, 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.
Which votes belong under an issue, and which side counts as “for”, is our interpretation, not part of the official record. So we only describe an MLA as voting “for” or “against” an issue after a person has checked both the issue’s wording and each vote’s link against Hansard. Until then the issue is marked “Review in progress” and shows each MLA’s recorded Aye or No. A checked decision can be reopened if new information comes to light.
Voting against an amendment can mean “not like this” or “not funded yet” rather than opposition to the idea, so each vote’s summary says whose proposal it was. Issues and summaries are prepared from Hansard. The official wording is always shown alongside any summary.
Voting the same way
On each MLA’s page, “who they voted the same way as” counts only divisions where both members are recorded, and shows both numbers (for example 18 of 21). With fewer than five shared votes we show the counts but no percentage. It doesn’t mean two members agree on policy: amendments and procedural votes can skew it, which is why you can narrow it to final votes, a topic or a year.
Elections
A candidate’s first preferences are their own votes, never estimated from their group’s total, and we check that candidates add up to their group and to the formal vote before showing them. Who was elected at an election isn’t the same as who sits in the Assembly now, so the two are shown separately.
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.
Asking questions
Answers on the Ask page are generated automatically from the records on this site. They cite the records they draw on and say when the records don’t cover a question.
Who’s behind Public Matter
Public Matter was created by Mitch Porteous, a Canberra-based entrepreneur working across technology, housing and community projects.
The idea is simple: information about public decisions should be easier for everyone to access and understand.
Public Matter is being developed as an independent civic technology project, beginning with the ACT.
Disclosure
Public Matter is self-funded by Mitch Porteous. Mitch isn’t a member of any political party, and no party or candidate funds or directs Public Matter. There are no ads, no paid placements and no data sold.
Corrections and right of reply
Accuracy matters. If something is wrong or missing, you can report it using the correction link on the relevant page, or report an error here.
Each report goes to a review queue and is checked against the available evidence. Elected representatives can use the same form to send a response or additional evidence for consideration.
Still to come: a public log of corrections, and showing representatives’ responses beside the record. Until then, corrections are made to the page itself.
Privacy and limitations
You don’t need an account to use Public Matter, and it doesn’t use advertising or tracking analytics. If you report an error, your email address is optional, used only to reply, and never published. Public Matter doesn’t run polls or collect anyone’s political views.
Limitations
- Most Assembly decisions are made on the voices, with no names recorded. Recorded votes show names only where the Assembly divided. The Decisions pages cover every motion and bill in the Minutes, including those agreed on the voices, but can’t say who supported them.
- Votes and decisions come from two sources (Hansard and the Minutes) that are updated at different times, so their latest dates can differ by a sitting day or two.
- Votes go back to November 2024 (the current Assembly). Earlier Assemblies aren’t covered yet.
- Election results (2016, 2020 and 2024) and parliamentary votes are separate records and cover different periods.
- Promises cover 2024 election material that could be found and archived; gaps are listed on that page.
- Surveys use different methods. A survey’s results describe the people who answered it and can’t automatically be applied to every Canberran.
- Public Matter is a preview. Issue groupings, summaries and notes about MLAs are still being reviewed, and each one shows where it is up to. The official records always take precedence.
How often it’s updated
New Hansard records are checked for every morning, so votes appear after each sitting week. Election results, surveys and promises are added by hand when they’re published. Each page shows the date of the records it uses.