General News
6 August, 2025
Disguising decline in country voice
Rural seats with metro votes, writes Miki Wilson I WAS standing in a paddock with landholders discussing the transmission lines that are going to go through their properties, when we got the call a few months ago to say that the Emergency Services...
Rural seats with metro votes, writes Miki Wilson
I WAS standing in a paddock with landholders discussing the transmission lines that are going to go through their properties, when we got the call a few months ago to say that the Emergency Services and Volunteers levy had been passed through State Parliament.
Since then we have seen the Federal Government of Prime Minister Albanese re-elected, a government will be introducing an unrealised capital gains tax.
All of this, together with the cost of living and potential drought, renewable zones through prime agricultural land got me thinking, what the heck has rural Victoria done to deserve this?
Of course, cost of living and taxes affect everyone, but rural Victoria seems to be copping a lot of other government interventions. Is it punishment?
I don’t know, but frankly it doesn’t seem equitable with our metropolitan counterparts reaping the benefits of all these rural impositions.
I wondered a bit about whether the structure of government favoured metropolitan Melbourne over rural areas, did a bit of research and learned a lot! Some of which may provide me and you with an explanation on why we feel so embattled in rural Victoria.
The Victorian Parliament consists of two houses; the two houses of Parliament are the Legislative Assembly, or Lower House and the Legislative Council, or Upper House
Although they are referred to as ‘houses’, the Assembly and the Council are actually two groups of people elected to debate issues, pass laws and hold the government to account.
The two houses are independent. Sometimes they disagree, and one house cannot control what the other decides.
Neither house is more powerful than the other. Although the term ‘Upper House’ is often used to describe the Council, it is not superior.
Upper houses of parliament are critical to overseeing and scrutinising the actions of governments, and to providing representation to regional populations.
The present design of Victoria’s upper house — the Legislative Council — reinforces urban domination of Victorian politics.
The present model is made up of eight electoral regions comprised of five members and has been in force since the 2006 state election, following a change to the Constitution Act 1975 to abolish the longstanding system of 22 two-member electoral provinces.
At the 2006 state election, the number of members of the Legislative Council was reduced from 44 to 40, and the number of electoral regions was reduced to eight, comprised of 11 Legislative Assembly electoral districts and with each region electing five members for four-year terms.
This representation of regional and rural areas is flawed. The eight electoral regions— five of which are in metropolitan Melbourne, and three of which are in regional Victoria—means regional Victoria is allocated 15 members in the Legislative Council while Melbourne is allocated 25 members.
This disguises a significant and growing numerical advantage for Melbourne: the regional electorates are not strictly confined to the regions but extend into suburban Melbourne.
For instance, the Eastern Victoria region reaches into Ferntree Gully and Croydon North, which are indisputably suburbs of Melbourne.
As regional electorates continue to increase in size, more Melbourne suburbs will continue to be allocated to regional Australia, diluting the parliamentary representation of non-Melbourne voters.
This imbalance undermines the ability of the upper house to check the parliamentary dominance of high-density urban areas and represent the interests and values of less populous but economically critical regional areas.
So I’m thinking that voters need to talk to their local MPs to ask how do we make it fairer for rural/regional Victoria when decisions are being made in parliament?
Miki Wilson is Loddon Shire’s Inglewood Ward councillor