Retrieve Data from the Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia

Retrieves data from the Australian Parliamentary Library's Parliamentary Handbook < https://handbook.aph.gov.au/> and returns it as tidy tables: members and senators, their parliamentary and party service, ministries, shadow ministries, committees, parties, electorates, parliaments, sitting dates, elections and two candidate preferred results. Known errors in the Handbook are flagged, and can optionally be corrected from a documented errata table.

ausPH

The goal of ausPH is to retrieve data from the Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia and return ready-to-analyse data, formatted as a tibble. The package relies on the data from the Handbook site, which is subject to change and improvement. Functions that query the Handbook’s API return NULL, with a message, if the API cannot be reached.

At present, the package contains the following functions:

• get2CP (Data on two candidate preferred results since 1919)[^1]
• getCommitteeMembers (Data on committee memberships since 1901)
• getElections (Data on elections since 1901)[^2]
• getElectorates (Data on electorates since 1901)
• getIndividuals (Data on individuals and biographical information since 1901)
• getParlService (data on parliamentary tenures of MPs and senators since 1901)
• getParliaments (Data on Parliamentary terms since 1901)
• getMinisters (Data on Ministers since 1901)
• getShadowMinisters (Data on Shadow Ministers since 1901)
• getParties (Data on Parties since 1901)
• getPartyService (Data on Party Service of MPs and Senators since 1901)
• getMinistries (Data on Ministries and Governing Parties since 1901)
• getOccupations (Data on all pre-parliamentary occupations listed since 1901)
• getQualifications (Data on all listed qualifications)
• getSchools (Data on all listed secondary schools)
• getSittingDates (Data on all parliamentary sitting dates since 1901)
• getErrata (Known errors in the Handbook, with corrections)

Data map

How the tables returned by ausPH link together. Hansard speeches are in development.

The diagram is drawn from data-raw/data_map.tex.

Errors in the Handbook

The Handbook is an excellent source, but it contains some errors. ausPH returns the Handbook’s data as it is by default, and marks rows with a known problem in a handbook_flag column, for example terms that overlap the member’s previous term, or sittings recorded for a chamber that did not sit.

The flag column is returned by getParlService(), getPartyService(), getSittingDates() and getElections(). Where the correct value is known, it is listed with its evidence in getErrata(), and passing apply_errata = TRUE to these functions uses the corrected value instead (no corrections are listed yet for getPartyService()):

getParlService(chamber = "house", apply_errata = TRUE)

If you find another error, please open an issue.

Stored data and updates

Some tables would take many requests to retrieve from the Handbook in full, so the package stores a copy and, by default, brings it up to date when you call the function:

Use update = FALSE to work from the stored copy alone, e.g. offline or for reproducibility. If the Handbook cannot be reached, these functions return the stored copy with a message. The date of the stored copy is in the scraped attribute and the date of any update in the updated attribute, e.g. attr(getElections("all"), "updated").

Installation

You can install the development version of ausPH from GitHub with:

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("palesl/ausPH")

Citation

Please cite this package as the following:

Leslie, Pat. 2026. “ausPH: An R Package to Retrieve Data from the Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia.” R package version 1.0.1. https://github.com/palesl/ausPH.

Bibtex format entry:

@misc{leslie_ausph_2026,
    title = {{ausPH}: {An} {R} package to retrieve data from the {Parliamentary} {Handbook} of the {Commonwealth} of {Australia}.},
    url = {https://github.com/palesl/ausPH},
    author = {Leslie, Pat},
    year = {2026},
    note = {R package version 1.0.1},
}

Examples

These examples show some simple functionality of the package:

library(ausPH) 
## get elections

getElections(chamber = "all", byelections = T)
#> All federal elections excluding elections for casual vacancies in the Senate
#> # A tibble: 218 × 12
#>       Id HandbookId Division    DateElection  Year FullSenateElection Parliament
#>    <dbl>      <dbl> <chr>       <date>       <dbl> <lgl>              <chr>     
#>  1   202        202 Federal     1901-03-29    1901 TRUE               P1        
#>  2   306        306 Darling Do… 1901-09-14    1901 FALSE              P1        
#>  3   378        378 Tasmania    1902-03-06    1902 FALSE              P1        
#>  4   312        312 East Sydney 1903-09-04    1903 FALSE              P1        
#>  5   203        203 Federal     1903-12-16    1903 FALSE              P2        
#>  6   394        394 Wilmot      1904-02-26    1904 FALSE              P2        
#>  7   356        356 Melbourne   1904-03-30    1904 FALSE              P2        
#>  8   371        371 Riverina    1904-05-18    1904 FALSE              P2        
#>  9   204        204 Federal     1906-12-12    1906 FALSE              P3        
#> 10   309        309 Echuca      1907-07-10    1907 FALSE              P3        
#> # ℹ 208 more rows
#> # ℹ 5 more variables: Reps <lgl>, Senate <lgl>, Byelection <lgl>,
#> #   SupplementaryElection <lgl>, handbook_flag <chr>

## get a list of parliaments

getParliaments()
#> # A tibble: 48 × 9
#>      PID Name             DateElection DateOpening DateDissolution ParliamentEnd
#>    <dbl> <chr>            <date>       <date>      <date>          <date>       
#>  1     1 First Parliament 1901-03-29   1901-05-09  1903-11-23      1903-12-15   
#>  2     2 Second Parliame… 1903-12-16   1904-03-02  1906-11-05      1906-12-11   
#>  3     3 Third Parliament 1906-12-12   1907-02-20  1910-02-19      1910-04-12   
#>  4     4 Fourth Parliame… 1910-04-13   1910-07-01  1913-04-23      1913-05-30   
#>  5     5 Fifth Parliament 1913-05-31   1913-07-09  1914-07-30      1914-09-04   
#>  6     6 Sixth Parliament 1914-09-05   1914-10-08  1917-03-26      1917-05-04   
#>  7     7 Seventh Parliam… 1917-05-05   1917-06-14  1919-11-03      1919-12-12   
#>  8     8 Eighth Parliame… 1919-12-13   1920-02-26  1922-11-06      1922-12-15   
#>  9     9 Ninth Parliament 1922-12-16   1923-02-28  1925-10-03      1925-11-13   
#> 10    10 Tenth Parliament 1925-11-14   1926-01-13  1928-10-09      1928-11-16   
#> # ℹ 38 more rows
#> # ℹ 3 more variables: ParliamentNext <dbl>, ParliamentOrdinal <chr>,
#> #   FQName <chr>

## get two candidate preferred since 1919

get2CP()
#> Notes contain information on results missing from the parliamentary handbook
#> # A tibble: 9,746 × 15
#>       Id Name  State  Year ElectionID Candidate Party   pID votes_2cp margin_2cp
#>    <dbl> <chr> <chr> <dbl>      <dbl> <chr>     <chr> <dbl>     <dbl>      <dbl>
#>  1 19855 Adel… SA     1919        209 Yates, E… Aust…     1     10184       -339
#>  2 19855 Adel… SA     1919        209 Blundell… Nati…    NA     10523        339
#>  3 19839 Angas SA     1919        209 Gabb, Mo… Aust…     1      9468        251
#>  4 19839 Angas SA     1919        209 Glynn, P… Nati…    NA      9217       -251
#>  5 19840 Bala… Vic    1919        209 Smith, P… Aust…     1     11495      -9760
#>  6 19840 Bala… Vic    1919        209 Watt, Wi… Nati…    NA     21255       9760
#>  7 19841 Ball… Vic    1919        209 McGrath,… Aust…     1     13568         -1
#>  8 19841 Ball… Vic    1919        209 Kerby, E… Nati…    NA     13569          1
#>  9 19842 Bark… SA     1919        209 Davies, … Aust…     1      7923      -6223
#> 10 19842 Bark… SA     1919        209 Livingst… Nati…    NA     14146       6223
#> # ℹ 9,736 more rows
#> # ℹ 5 more variables: margin_percentage_2cp <dbl>, swing_2cp <dbl>,
#> #   Status <chr>, Note <chr>, source <chr>

## known errors in the Handbook

getErrata()
#> # A tibble: 14 × 9
#>    table        key   field handbook_value corrected_value issue evidence source
#>    <chr>        <chr> <chr> <chr>          <chr>           <chr> <chr>    <chr> 
#>  1 parl_service BV8|… Date… 1946-06-28     1946-09-28      over… Term st… https…
#>  2 parl_service RG4|… Date… 1975-05-18     1974-05-18      over… Term en… https…
#>  3 parl_service L08|… Date… 1940-08-21     1940-09-21      over… Term st… https…
#>  4 parl_service JXQ|… Date… 1977-11-10     1977-12-10      over… Term st… https…
#>  5 parl_service KDT|… Date… 1972-11-02     1972-12-02      over… Term st… https…
#>  6 sitting_dat… 1928… Sena… TRUE           FALSE           cham… Only th… https…
#>  7 sitting_dat… 1997… Sena… TRUE           FALSE           cham… Canberr… https…
#>  8 sitting_dat… 2008… Reps… TRUE           FALSE           cham… The 42n… https…
#>  9 elections    378   Date… 1902-03-06     1902-03-26      date… The Han… https…
#> 10 elections    343   Date… 1910-08-29     1910-08-24      date… The Han… https…
#> 11 elections    341   Date… 1940-11-10     1940-11-16      date… The Han… https…
#> 12 elections    9004  Date… 1945-10-18     1945-08-18      date… The Han… https…
#> 13 elections    315   Date… 1963-06-01     1963-09-28      date… The Han… https…
#> 14 elections    327   Date… 1963-09-28     1963-06-01      date… The Han… https…
#> # ℹ 1 more variable: date_added <chr>

Last updated: 26 October 2026. See NEWS.md for changes.

Image Attribution

Hex image icon: Canberra Parliament House by Anna Hatzisavas from Noun Project

[^1]: get2CP() returns a stored copy of the Handbook’s results, with any elections held since added from the Handbook (see below). Where the Handbook has no result for a division, a result from another source is used instead, documented in the Note and source variables.

[^2]: Two elections the Handbook does not list (the Wide Bay by-election of 1928 and the Dickson supplementary election of 1993) are added, with the package’s own identifiers and flagged not_in_handbook. HandbookId gives the Handbook’s own identifier for every other election.