General News
23 November, 2022
From here and there they stand
EDITORIALWHEN you go to vote any time between now and election day, November 26, there will be one very long ballot paper for the Legislative Council. Long, because vying for five positions to represent Northern Victoria Region are 55 candidates and...
EDITORIAL
WHEN you go to vote any time between now and election day, November 26, there will be one very long ballot paper for the Legislative Council.
Long, because vying for five positions to represent Northern Victoria Region are 55 candidates and in Western Victoria Region there are 57.
We will be lucky to see a handful of these 100-plus political hopefuls make their way into Loddon communities.
Two reasons - these regions are so large they extend to all areas of Victoria apart from deep metropolitan Melbourne, Gippsland and the La Trobe Valley; candidates are from every party under the sun ranging from the main stream outfits to more recent political activist groupings like the New Democracy, Sack Dan Andrews Restore Democracy, Sustainable Australia Party Stop Overdevelopment and Corruption, Legalise Cannabis Victoria and Health Australia Party.
They will be looking to “game” the process by harvesting and swapping preferences that can see candidates elected with a very small percentage of the vote. Animal Justice Party’s Andy Meddick was elected at the 2018 election with 2.71 per cent of the vote and to the best of our knowledge, has not once ventured physically into the Loddon communities he is meant to represent although he did chime in from afar on plans to process harvested kangaroos for pet meat in Inglewood with petitions and activism that sought to influence a decision, even if that decision by Loddon Shire to refuse a planning permit was based purely on planning legislation.
Stuart Grimley, Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party was elected with 4.4 per cent and at least has made visits to this area advocating solutions to the child care crisis. And the Northern Region MPs from smaller parties have made some visits to our patches too.
It is almost 20 years since the multi-member proportional representation model was implemented to elect Legislative Council members. But when these members of Parliament at best make a once a year “tick a box” visit, we are right to question whether proportional representation equates to diversity in community representation of the people elected to sit in the parliamentary house of review.
Not seeing much of these Upper House MPs is a, perhaps, natural extension of seeing nothing of them in an election campaign. Are they truly motivated to be a voice of local communities? Do they even know where our Loddon communities are and anything about our issues and aspirations? And yet they want our vote!
In fairness, the geographical spread of these two electoral regions makes for a daunting prospect for hopefuls to engage and connect. One could almost say, impossible. If that is the reality, then the current structure for the Legislative Council may be in need of review. Almost two decades has been ample time to trial a representative framework. The robustness of scrutiny of candidates has been reduced if they don’t, won’t or can’t engage with the communities they claim they want to represent ... some are not even residents of the (large) areas.