One vote, one value casts shadow over Labor as Premier refuses to rule out electoral reform

Premier Mark McGowan has repeatedly declined to rule out reforms to WA's electoral system if he wins the state election, prompting Opposition claims he is preparing to "ambush" regional voters after the poll.Mark McGowan has declined to rule out changes to the Upper HouseSpearheaded by the WA Nationals, opposition parties have claimed Labor is planning to pursue a shake-up of State Parliament's Upper House electoral arrangements to reduce the weighting given to regional seats.

Mr McGowan has suggested that such reforms are "not on our agenda", but would not be drawn on whether Labor would rule them out if it won a second term at this Saturday's election. Under WA's electoral laws, Upper House regional and rural electorates — known as divisions — have the same number of seats as those in the city despite having sometimes significantly smaller populations.

Critics of the system point out that the Mining and Pastoral division, with a population of fewer than 70,000 in 2017, has the same number of MPs as South Metropolitan, which had almost 410,000 voters on its rolls.During a visit to Albany last week, the Premier declined to rule out changes to Upper House electoral laws, as Labor has done following claims it would reprise its campaign to lift the gold royalty rate.

So the lower population areas get the same upper house MP'S as the more populated areas and the regional MP'S are worried about under representation if they changed it to be based on population... or are they worried about losing there seats?

Seems like a fair idea to me.

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