Western Australian Legislative Council

Western Australian Legislative Council

The Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of parliament in the Australian state of Western Australia. Its central purpose is to act as a house of review for legislation passed through the lower house, the Legislative Assembly. It sits in Parliament House in the state capital, Perth.

The Legislative Council today has 36 members, elected for fixed four-year terms. Each member is elected under a proportional and preferential voting system using the single transferable vote method, and represents one of six multi-member regions. Each region elects six members. Under proportional representation, it is not unusual for a government, lacking a clear majority in the Legislative Council, to rely on the voting support of independent members and/or minor parties, such as The Greens, to pass legislation. As with all other Australian states and territories, voting is compulsory for all resident Australian citizens—and eligible British citizens (i.e., those permanently resident and on the electoral roll prior to the passage of the Australia Act) —who are over the legal voting age of 18.

Since only about 35 per cent of Western Australia's population is located in towns and small settlements across an area of over 2.6 million kilometres outside the Perth metropolitan area, until 2005 the state used a zonally weighted electoral system for both houses of parliament. This provided that the vote of a Perth citizen effectively counted for less than that of a rural voter.

On 20 May 2005, with the official enactment of the Electoral Amendment and Repeal Act 2005 (No.1 of 2005), the State was split into 6 regions by community of interest, 3 metropolitan and 3 rural, each electing 6 members to the Legislative council.