First, WA’s Legislative Council has the most extreme malapportionment of any state or territory house of parliament in Australia today.
At the 2017 state election, 68,480 people were enrolled in the Mining and Pastoral region, electing six members. At the same election, 409,325 people were enrolled in the South Metropolitan Region, also electing six members.
In other words, one vote in the Mining and Pastoral region was worth almost six votes in the South Metropolitan region. All three Perth Metropolitan regions experience a similar imbalance compared to the Mining and Pastoral region, and to a lesser extent the Agricultural region (around a 4:1 ratio).
This distorts electoral outcomes, and fails the democratic fairness test as it denies all Western Australians an equal say in how their state is governed.
No other state electoral system allows such malapportionment. And the problem is getting worse every election, as regional populations decline relative to the Perth Metropolitan and South-West regions.
There is no brake on this trend within the legislation – it will persist into perpetuity unless something is done to arrest it.
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