Equal Rights

Do you feel that others should have more rights than you? Should geographical location be the sole reason for granting said increased rights? The Western Australian Farmers' Federation seems to believe that those that live in the country deserve more rights than those that live in the city.

In WA we currently have a gerrymander for voting in our state parliament. This means that it takes less votes to win a country seat than it does to win a city seat because the electorates are made up of fewer people. Effectively, this means that those living in the city have less voting power than those living in the country. For instance, the seat of Albany had roughly 14,500 voters in the recent election, whereas Wanneroo had a little over 31,000. That's over twice as many people. So what, you might say. Country people need all the help they can get. Yeah but it gets really silly when you consider that Mandurah is considered to be a country seat, whereas both Rockingham and Peel are city seats. Basically, it's a stupid system and badly outdated.

The Labor Party have been pushing for years to have it changed, mainly because the gerrymander favours the conservatives - in particular the Nationals. However, the legislation has constantly been blocked by the Legislative Council, which has an even more ridiculous gerrymander. There are just over 68,000 votes in the Mining and Pastoral Region, as opposed to just shy of 400,000 in North Metropolitan. The last time the legislation lost by one vote.

The result of the latest election could change all that. Unlike the Legislative Assembly, which changes immediately after the election, the make-up of the Legislative Council doesn't change until May. As a result Labor may have two opportunities to push the legislation through the upper house. Either through a majority in the own right in the new Council or with the help of the independents in the old Council. We can only hope so.

We need an end to the gerrymander. We need this legislation to pass. If Geoff Gallop manages nothing more in his tenure as Premier he will have done a great deal for this state. We need one vote, one value. Only then will all the voters in this state have equal rights.