Royalties for Regions
One of the most disappointing events performed by the McGowan government has been the removal of vote weighting in the legislative council. This leaves the country area’s upper house representation decimated. Western Australia is the largest state in Australia, but Perth’s population makes it the nations most city-centric state capital.
One would have thought that the state government would have progressed with the Royalties for Regions program wholeheartedly, to repopulate the areas that have seen a population drain to the city. However the opposite has happened with $3 billion in funds designated for the country areas re-diverted to the Perth area.
The McGowan treatment of our regional areas is not dissimilar to the way the eastern states see our state. WA is simply a state where the national resources come from, we’re a long way away, and we have little say as most of the media is run from the big cities.