Load the package with:
library(AustralianPoliticians)The purpose of AustralianPoliticians is to make it easier to access biographical and political data about Australian federal politicians. This is done through the use of functions that get and manipulate publicly accessible datasets that were constructed for this purpose. These datasets have every politician in the House of Representatives and the Senate between 1901 and 2021. To get started with the package:
Request codes are used to access the specific datasets in AustralianPoliticians. These codes used in conjunction with the get_auspol() function allow for a dataset to be downloaded and assigned a variable name. The show_datacodes() function prints these codes to the console as a tibble.
show_datacodes()
# A tibble: 4 x 2
request_code dataset
<chr> <chr>
1 all australian_politicians-all.csv
2 allbyparty australian_politicians-all-by_party.csv
3 mps australian_politicians-mps-by_division.csv
4 senators australian_politicians-senators-by_state.csvEach of the shown codes is associated with a .csv dataset. The get_auspol() function is used to download these datasets, allowing them to be assigned to a variable. To function correctly, the argument passed to get_auspol() must be a character string. If get_auspol() is called without being assigned to a variable it will print out a preview to the requested dataset to the console, as seen below.
get_auspol("all")
# A tibble: 1,781 x 20
uniqueID surname allOtherNames firstName commonName
<chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <chr>
1 Abbott18~ Abbott Richard Hart~ Richard NA
2 Abbott18~ Abbott Percy Phipps Percy NA
3 Abbott18~ Abbott Macartney Macartney Mac
4 Abbott18~ Abbott Charles Lydi~ Charles Aubrey
5 Abbott18~ Abbott Joseph Palmer Joseph NA
6 Abbott19~ Abbott Anthony John Anthony Tony
7 Abel1939 Abel John Arthur John NA
8 Abetz1958 Abetz Eric Eric NA
9 Adams1943 Adams Judith Anne Judith NA
10 Adams1951 Adams Dick Godfrey~ Dick NA
# ... with 1,771 more rows, and 15 more variables:
# displayName <chr>, earlierOrLaterNames <chr>,
# title <chr>, gender <chr>, birthDate <date>,
# birthYear <dbl>, birthPlace <chr>,
# deathDate <date>, member <dbl>, senator <dbl>,
# wasPrimeMinister <dbl>, wikidataID <chr>,
# wikipedia <chr>, adb <chr>, comments <chr>
all_auspol <- get_auspol("all")In some cases, it may be necessary to join datasets to gain more information than is contained in just one dataset. The get_reps_senate() function does this in downloading the house of representatives data or senate data and joins these with the all dataset to show the dates served by a politician in either political sector. It can do this for both datasets, joining house of representatives and senate to all, or for just one of house of representative or senate depending on what is required.
This function also includes an argument that allows for the associated request codes to be printed to the console.
# Return codes used to call datasets
get_reps_senate("codes")
# A tibble: 3 x 2
request_code dataset
<chr> <chr>
1 reps_senate Generates a dataset of HoRs and Senate ~
2 reps Generates a dataset of HoRs members
3 senate Generates a dataset of Senate members
# Request HoR and Senate dataset
reps_senate <- get_reps_senate("reps_senate")
# Preview dataset
head(reps_senate)
# A tibble: 6 x 4
uniqueID from to house
<chr> <date> <date> <chr>
1 Abbott1869 1913-05-31 1919-11-03 HoR
2 Abbott1886 1925-11-14 1929-10-12 HoR
3 Abbott1886 1931-12-19 1937-03-28 HoR
4 Abbott1891 1940-09-21 1949-10-31 HoR
5 Abbott1957 1994-03-26 2019-05-18 HoR
6 Abel1939 1975-12-13 1977-11-10 HoR
# Request HoR dataset
reps <- get_reps_senate("reps")
# Preview dataset
head(reps)
# A tibble: 6 x 4
uniqueID from to house
<chr> <date> <date> <chr>
1 Abbott1869 1913-05-31 1919-11-03 HoR
2 Abbott1886 1925-11-14 1929-10-12 HoR
3 Abbott1886 1931-12-19 1937-03-28 HoR
4 Abbott1891 1940-09-21 1949-10-31 HoR
5 Abbott1957 1994-03-26 2019-05-18 HoR
6 Abel1939 1975-12-13 1977-11-10 HoR
# Request Senate dataset
senate <- get_reps_senate("senate")
#Preview dataset
head(senate)
# A tibble: 6 x 4
uniqueID from to house
<chr> <date> <date> <chr>
1 Abbott1859 1928-12-18 1929-06-30 Senate
2 Abbott1869 1925-11-14 1929-06-30 Senate
3 Abbott1877 1935-07-01 1941-06-30 Senate
4 Abetz1958 1994-02-22 NA Senate
5 Adams1943 2005-07-01 2012-03-31 Senate
6 Adamson1857 1920-07-01 1922-05-02 Senate