Queensland Parliament rejects LNP bill to increase electorates

The LNP’s bill to increase up to five seats in Queensland's constituency has been rejected by the state's parliament after a long heated debate on Wednesday night. The Queensland parliament already has 89 seats for electorates, and the opposition had proposed to introduce more to enhance the value of votes from remote locations.

The opposition party in Queensland said that the increase in the number of seats for MPs would allow voters belonging to more rural areas to put forward their views and opinions comfortably in government. Noosa representative Glen Elmes said at the time of debate that if parliament rejected the bill, it would not gain any seats from the western and northern constituencies of Queensland.

The Katter’s Australian Party came forward to support the amendments demanded by the bill. Robbie Katter and Shane Knuth from the party delivered speeches at Parliament, saying that those opposing the bill were doing injustice to the rural Queensland community. Mount Isa's Rob Katter said that he faced a lot of difficulties in looking after the 570,000 square kilometre area that falls under constituency.

Katter also stated that the bill was not proposed to increase the number of politicians in a constituency, but was aimed at sharing responsibilities.

“I’ve got 14 councils to look after, 23 police stations, 40 schools,” Katter said, according to the ABC. “There’s a lot those kids that I never get to hand something out to on presentation day ... I can’t do it from a phone.”

Labor strongly opposed the bill, claiming that LNP was doing everything it could to retain its political power in Queensland. Cook’s Independent MP Billy Gordon also opposed the bill, saying it was “the hardest thing I have had to vote on since my time in the parliament.” He noted the proposed clauses and accepted that those were motivation enough for proper improvement of rural representation of Queensland.

“I oppose this bill not because I am not attracted to changes that help constituents access their local representatives ... I oppose the bill because I believe the methods the bill seeks to use to address the problem are fundamentally flawed,” Gordon told the Sunshine Coast Daily.

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