Last week, I tweeted that I was in Canberra. I was there to acquire some documentation required for my visa (and they better goddamn give me my visa – I’ve been waiting for about 2 years for it already, and my partner already has her permanent visa). And of course, this tweet about a commotion from the gallery of the House of Representatives would indicate I was in the Parliament at that time. Of course that was a delayed tweet since phones weren’t allowed in the gallery. The following tweet would then give clues to what I thought about the visit to Question Time.
Yes, I decided to make a visualization on Question Time. I sat through the entire session, and I thought it might be interesting to do a dataviz on what I saw. I went to the Parliament Hansard records site * The words “Hansard records” comes from the redundant department of redundancy , picked out the hansard for the day I went (September 13), and processed the Question Time transcript. The day I was there, I noted only two main topics of interest – Asylum Seekers (a.k.a the Malaysia Plan vs the Pacific Solution) and the Carbon Tax * As an economist, I must say the carbon tax is a brilliant idea . I also noticed that for the Carbon Tax/Climate Change questions were from government backbenchers, and that the opposition rarely asked questions (only ridiculous interjections). The Malaysia vs Nauru plan for refugees however, had brilliant responses from both sides * no actually, not really, both sides’ arguments are utter and total crap – I can see so much better solutions for both parties to join together and opt for. Seems like politicians don’t think out of the box . This to me indicated that there would be two ways to visualize Question Time.
So, without much ado, I present: the Carbon Tax/Climate Change visualization from parliament Question Time on 13th September 2011:
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