Liberal MLC Steve Thomas slams Labor Upper House MPs’ silence on one vote, one value reforms

South West MLC Steve Thomas has slammed Labor’s Upper House members for not speaking out on historic electoral reforms as WA moves closer to one vote, one value. In September, a Ministerial Expert Committee on Electoral Reform tabled its review into how “electoral equality” could be achieved for citizens voting for the Legislative Council. The reform would remove the six existing Legislative Council regions — each represented by six MPs — and replace them with one “whole-of-State” electorate, with the number of MPs rising from 36 to 37. Country WA is currently represented by half of the Upper House MPs across three regions. Ballot preferencing would also be simplified and group voting tickets abolished to prevent complex preference harvesting deals between micro-parties. The Constitutional and Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Equality) Bill 2021 passed its second reading in the Upper House last Thursday with a 21-10 vote. South West Legalise Cannabis WA MP Sophia Moermond and Mining and Pastoral MP Wilson Tucker joined the Opposition MPs in voting against the Bill. It passed its third reading in the Lower House 40-5 votes on October 14. Dr Thomas said by the end of the second reading, the only Labor MPs to join the debate were the parliamentary secretary running the Bill and South West MLC Alannah MacTiernan. “That means that of the 10 regional Labor Upper House MPs only Alannah MacTiernan deigned to make a comment,” he said. “The other nine silently toed the Labor line as regional representation was decimated. “Labor is one step closer to achieving its admitted 120-year ideological goal of gutting regional representation and boosting their electoral chances by shifting seats into metropolitan Perth. “It may well be a great day for the Labor Party in WA, but it is a sad day for democracy and a devastating day for regional communities, families and people”. Speaking in Parliament, Ms MacTiernan saidthe reforms would allow for a “greater diversity of voices that you can’t have in the Legislative Assembly”. “I love regional WA — everyone on this side of the chamber does and feels strongly about it — but that is not a reason to compromise our democratic principles,” she said on Thursday. “That is not a reason to entrench a small group of people in a position of privilege and deny ourselves the opportunity to have true democracy and a Parliament that sings with all the voices of the community. “We accept that all people are equal. That is the basic democratic proposition, that all people are equal. “You’re saying, ‘but if you live in a regional area, you’ve got disadvantage’. “Our argument is that there are all sorts of disadvantage and we’re not going in to unpick those and try to do that weighting. We are saying that everyone’s vote is equal.”