Free vote patterns in the New South Wales state parliament

How did legislators vote on a number of key policy issues in the New South Wales Parliament?  To address this question, this research note examines the legislative voting behaviour of MPs. Abstract In Australia, a small number of mainly \u27morality politics\u27 issues offer an insight into MPs\u27 voting behaviour, as MPs are not disciplined by party leaders.  This research note examines patterns of MPs’ voting behaviour during ‘conscience’ or ‘free’ votes on three such issues in the lower house of the New South Wales Parliament: adoption rights for gay couples; cloning; and the status of the Sydney Medically Supervised Injection Centre. First, the research note reviews the literature on conscience voting and hypothesises that party will be the main predictor of voting patterns, but also establishes that previous studies have almost exclusively focussed on national legislatures. Next the research note discusses methodological issues. Third, the research note presents the analysis of free vote patterns in the New South Wales Parliament on the three ‘morality politics’ issues, along four key variables: party; sex; social ideology; and religion. The analysis of voting in the New South Wales Parliament challenges existing explanations of  free voting, where party is the key predictor of voting patterns. Intra-party unity figures show that that party membership is a much weaker predictor of voting behaviour in the two main political parties in New South Wales than in either the Australian Parliament or in overseas parliaments. It is argued that at the sub-national level, other factors are more important in explanations of free vote patterns.    This research note written by Alison Plumb, School of Politics and International Relations, ANU is forthcoming in Legislative Studies, 22 (1). &nbsp