Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian politics

Sankey (aka Alluvial) diagrams
So, in my opinion, the table with First Preference Percentage and the Two Candidate Preferred percentage is pretty uninformative. Just from those numbers, you might be left scratching your head as to why the person leading on first preferences ends up losing. Sure you can *imply* that the Greens vote went to Labor, One Nation vote went to Liberal, etc, but there should be something more explicit.

With minor parties surging, outright wins on first preference (i.e. a candidate receiving more than 50% of the vote, rendering preferences meaningless) are becoming more and more rare, with 133/151 (87%) seats being won on first preferences in 2022, way up from only 63/147 (43%) in 1993.

I was inspired to start making Sankey diagrams of Australian lower house seats (this wouldn't work in a visually coherent way in the Australian Senate because each state is effectively a multi member constituency) from an image from 2022 United States Senate election in Alaska (right). This image clearly shows that the Democrats overwhelmingly preferred Murkowski over Tshibaka and this got Murkowski over the 50% line.

I have made quite a few Sankey diagrams of various Australian seats here on Flourish. Would people support if I generated one for every seat (in a better format than Flourish, possibly Plotly or another custom designed one to best convey the information, the Alaska senate example is a good one) and added them to every seat page, with the data from the latest election, possibly via a bot since I'm not going to do it 151 times lol. MarkiPoli (talk) 10:16, 7 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I'd be in support of that. It really is a useful diagram that shows in an instant exactly where the primary votes ended up in each count. It might get a bit complicated for seats with lots of candidates, but it's more of a rarity that seats get more than 10. Kirsdarke01 (talk) 06:53, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I think they're absolutely gorgeous graphs, and highly useful too. I would 100% support adding them to all seats you wish :) GraziePrego (talk) 08:40, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I have done a few Sankey diagrams of preference flows, particularly where the two-candidate outcome was different to the first preference leader, such as 2018 Braddon by-election. It should certainly be possible to do in an automated way—I have done it before as a Shiny app in R to download the AEC data and generate preference diagrams for each division at the 2019 federal election for a university assignment: https://metacoretechs.shinyapps.io/DataVisAssignment3/ . I'll see if I can put the code on Github. --Canley (talk) 13:10, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Very interesting! That would be helpful if you could do that. I've been messing around in python and the AEC has the entire preference flow for every seat in one CSV (unlike victoria...), which is handy, you can simply wrangle that using any old code (python in my case) to convert it into a format for a sankey diagram. MarkiPoli (talk) 11:12, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

City of Brisbane 2024 election - 2nd set of eyes
I would much appreciate it if anyone who is more in the habit of writing content about politics than me could look over the section City of Brisbane which contains the results of the recent 2024 Brisbane City Council election. I stumbled onto it this afternoon and it was in a mess. Names of the elected people were in the article but supported by citations from 2020, parties and the colours didn't match, counts of members of parties were wrong, etc. I find it was too much of a mess to just walk away, so I did my best to clean it up, but it involves use of tables and the diagrams that I am not familiar with, so I hope I have brought it up to date, but would welcome a second set of eyes. I don't know where to find the salary data, so I didn't touch that. Thanks if you can help! Free free to change anything I got wrong! Kerry (talk) 07:35, 16 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Just one comment. There are 26 councillors and 1 mayor, so the total adds up to 27. That had me confused for a while. Kerry (talk) 07:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Have rebuilt the intro to that section. Hope it flows a little better now.
 * (Also, isn't odd how the Mayor is elected separately, and doesn't have a ward. Kind of presidential.) MatthewDalhousie (talk) 11:57, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Photos of election campaign posters apparently in breach of Commons Wikimedia?
Some photos of election campagin posters I have taken over the past year has been deleted or nominated to be deleted because "Similar to UK, no freedom of panorama for "graphic works" in Australia". Just want to know everyone's thoughts on this.

Currently this photo File:Aston by-election poster Bayswater West Shops April 2023.jpg is nominated to be deleted.  Marc nut 1996  (talk) 11:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)


 * The deleting of campaign posters really bothers me, given that this category of image is created to be seen, used and shared in the public domain. But we'll need to find a solid argument. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 12:00, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Positioning of non-Latin-script names in biographies
Hi all. A fellow Australian contributor (@DeadlyRampage2) had a discussion with me today on page Talk:Fatima Payman regarding the exact placement of foreign-origin names not written in a Latin script. He objected to my usage of the "native_name" parameter of Template:Infobox officeholder for including the Persian name. He says that it is not conventional for articles included in WikiProject Australian politics to use that infobox parameter. Hence we agreed to move the name out of the infobox to the lead section.

Is this indeed a convention specific to Australia-related biographies? The "native_name" parameter is used quite widely across infoboxes on the site. After I concurred with his suggestion of moving Payman's secondary name out of the infobox, that fellow contributor has removed the parameter from infoboxes of other people (e.g. edits [1 ], [2 ]), claiming "consensus on Australian politician pages".

I have not been involved in Wikiproject Australia discussions (or with Australian editors in general) and would appreciate some insight. I am of the view that an indiscriminate pursuit of removing usages of the parameter could contribute to Systemic bias along cultural lines, as such infoboxes illuminate significant cultural heritage and are also useful to certain multi-lingual readers like myself. I write here because there is clearly no site-wide rule. I'm curious about whether there has been prior discussion on this specific issue within Wikiproject Australia.

Thanks! Y. Dongchen (talk) 13:11, 5 July 2024 (UTC)


 * I would like to say that I reject it is a culture bias. Not only do I find that offensive as a multicultural Australian, but it also goes against Wikipedia rules as is required by AGF which states that there is a required assumption among editors that another member is geniunely engaging in an edit in good faith. I would also ad that I have found 2 articles, of which you have mentioned above. 2, out of hundreds of Australian multicultural politicians, that are clearly in the minority as to whether script of another language is to be used in the infobox. It is commonplace for multicultural policians to have the script of their native language in the lead paragraph and not in the infobox, especially not both. In conclusion, I would also add that in many wikipedia infoboxes, a parameter can actually be added, however contain nothing in it, which is actually quite common, and this may skew the results of your research. Thanks DeadlyRampage26 (talk) 13:23, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I sincerely apologise if you feel hurt by my formulation of the message. I want to say that I had no intention of disenfranchising you. I did not characterise your edits as "trolling" or "vandalism". I have consistently engaged with you via talk pages in a polite way. I hope you understand. Indeed my message here is too harsh in hindsight. I am sorry about that. Y. Dongchen (talk) 14:11, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Its all good. Im just trying to get my point across that im not doing this in bad faith. I am simply following through with the same standards for most of the Australian politician pages by extending them to the few outliers. DeadlyRampage26 (talk) 14:13, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. Your many draft articles are commendable. I haven't and won't interfere with any of your removal of those Australian political figures' "native_name" from infoboxes until someone else can provide some guidance. It did indeed look like I was suggesting you're a overt racist. Sorry again about the formulation of the message. Y. Dongchen (talk) 14:34, 5 July 2024 (UTC)