Ministerial staff in Australia

I have a primary dataset on Australian political staff from 2002-2020. This includes staff working in the Prime Minister's Office, all Cabinet Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries, and the shadow government. Please contact me for access to this primary data. The two graphs here illustrate a timline of ministerial staff in Australia from 2002 to 2020.

Declining two-party vote share in Australia and the rise of minority governments

These two graphs illustrate a modest downward trend in the vote share of Australia's two-party major vote share (Labor and the Coalition) from 1940-2020. The electoral outcomes of this trend link is linked to observations about an incremental rise hung parliaments and minority governments.

The illustration below demonstrates the frequency of minority governments over a 60-year timeline at the federal level and in the six states.

Download the Commonwealth, NSW, and Victoria graph

Download the Qld, WA, SA, and Tasmania graph

Summer 2019: visiting researcher at Carleton University Ottawa, Canada

In the Summer of 2019 I had the pleasure of undertaking field research in Canada. Based at Carleton University, I researched and collected data to help explain how the Prime Minister's Office and cabinet ministers' offices have evolved from small and staffed by civil servants in the 1960s, to large and staffed by partisan appointments in 2019. I wrote an op-ed article for The Conversation discussing Canadian political staff.

Vote Compass 2016 attracts more than 1.3 million responses

Vote Compass is Australia’s largest survey on voter attitudes. I advised on research design, methodology, question calibration, and coded this research into an interactive civic engagement tool, hosted by the ABC (the national media broadcaster), which analysed voters’ positions on party policies. During the 2016 Australian federal election, we received more than 1.3 million responses in eight-weeks. Our research partners included the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the University of Toronto, and the University of Sydney.