This is the personal blog of Ian Ker, who was Councillor for the South Ward of the Town of Vincent from 1995 to 2009. I have been a resident of this area since 1985. This blog was originally conceived as a way of letting residents of Vincent know what I have been doing and sharing thoughts on important issues. I can now use it to sound off about things that concern me.

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Saturday, March 22, 2014

A Counter-Proposal

Western Australia has 59 members of the Legislative Assembly, one for every 42,000 people. Forty-two of these represent electorates in the Perth Metropolitan Area - 40% more than there are local governments, currently, and nearly three times as many as the number of local governments proposed by Messrs Barnett and Simpson.

This is confusing for local governments and their communities. Some have to share an MLA with neighbouring communities and others have more than one MLA to represent them, but only in conjunction with other local governments/ communities that are also part of their electorates.

It is also unfair on local communities, as few, if any, have the undivided attention of any single MLA, and unfair on MLAs who have to balance the sometimes-competing demands of different communities they represent.

So, Mr Premier, what if we were to reduce, or even remove, this confusion and unfairness, by aligning Legislative Assembly electorate boundaries with local government boundaries - then we could reduce the number of metropolitan MLAs from 42 to 30 (currently) or even to 15 (with your proposals).

Country electorates would, of course, remain unchanged, Mr Premier, as we wouldn't want to upset your coalition partners - just as you have exempted them from the unfair and discriminatory provisions of the Local Government Amendment Bill currently before the Legislative Council in order to buy their acquiescence in this appalling attempt to promote your ideological agenda.

So then we would end up with 47 or 32 MLAs.

Would this be a good or a bad thing? I really don't know, Mr Premier, but then you haven't given us any evidence that you know about whether reducing the number of metropolitan local governments to an arbitrary 50% of their current number is a good thing or not. All you have done is assert, without providing evidence, that it is a good thing.

I suspect the outcome would be that the business of the Executive would be streamlined and simplified but that MLAs would be less connected to the communities they are required to represent. Whether this is good or bad probably depends on whether you are a member of the Executive (the WA Cabinet currently has 17 members) or the community (around 2.5 million).

Weight of numbers might be against you, Mr Premier.

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