Perth Voice Interactive

LABOR’S come down on the side of Vincent in the merger debate, with Mark McGowan saying his troops won’t support any City of Perth Act that forcibly merges the two councils or which allows vote-weighting to favour businesses over residents.

Premier Colin Barnett is planning to use the Act to mush the two councils together.

Both councils have released position statements on the idea: Perth’s runs to 133 pages but Vincent mayor John Carey says his council doesn’t have those kind of resources so his runs to seven.

A key difference is Vincent is heavily pushing “one vote, one value,” but the PCC reckons CBD businesses that employ lots of workers deserve more of a say.

Perth is spruiking a City of London model where workplaces with 50 employees get 10 votes, with another vote for every additional 50. They say “given the unique nature of the capital city and its predominantly commercial focus it is considered reasonable to advocate for the strongest possible electoral franchise for non-residential voters”.

Mr McGowan says that’s undemocratic and he won’t support it: he says it’d be like giving Andrew Forrest and James Packer more votes simply because they’re wealthy.

The City of Perth Act isn’t a sure thing, even through the lower house where the government can usually count on having the numbers. Liberal MP Rob Johnson has publicly said he’ll oppose it and if the Nationals follow suit it’ll take just one more Liberal to cross the floor for the legislation to sink.

If it does get through the lower house it faces a fight in the upper house where the combined votes of the Nationals, Labor and the Greens would be enough to stop it.

by DAVID BELL