The Metropolitan Province was a multi-member electoral province of the Western Australian Legislative Council, located in the metropolitan region of Perth. It was created by the Constitution Acts Amendment Act 1893, and became effective on 22 May 1894 following the first council elections following the granting of responsible government to Western Australia. The seat was safe for the Liberal Party and its predecessors.
Western Australia is a state occupying the entire western third of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, and the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Australia is Australia's largest state, with a total land area of 2,529,875 square kilometres, and the second-largest country subdivision in the world, surpassed only by Russia's Sakha Republic. The state has about 2.6 million inhabitants – around 11 percent of the national total – of whom the vast majority live in the south-west corner, 79 per cent of the population living in the Perth area, leaving the remainder of the state sparsely populated.
The Western Australian Legislative Council is the upper house of the Parliament of Western Australia, a state of Australia. It is regarded as a house of review for legislation passed by the Legislative Assembly, the lower house. The two Houses of Parliament sit in Parliament House in the state capital, Perth.
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability, the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. Governments in Westminster democracies are responsible to parliament rather than to the monarch, or, in a colonial context, to the imperial government, and in a republican context, to the president, either in full or in part. If the parliament is bicameral, then the government is responsible first to the parliament's lower house, which is more representative than the upper house, as it has more members and they are always directly elected.
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Until the 1950 elections, it covered Perth's central business district and nearby environs, but moved at that point to the western and northern suburbs while still extending to include Perth itself. In 1963–1964, electoral changes to the Legislative Council, which abolished the 10 three-member seats and created 15 two-member seats in their place, resulted in the seat shrinking into the wealthy western suburbs region. Thereafter, it was a safe seat for the Liberal Party. In 1989, the province was abolished by the Acts Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 1987, and with two others became part of the North Metropolitan Region under the new proportional voting system.
The Liberal Party of Australia is the division of the Liberal Party of Australia in Western Australia. Formed in 1945, the party has held power for five separate periods in coalition with the National Party. The party has been in opposition in the state since the 2017 election.
The electoral region of North Metropolitan is a multi-member electoral region of the Western Australian Legislative Council, located in the north-western and western suburbs of Perth. It was created by the Acts Amendment Act 1987, and became effective on 22 May 1989 with seven members who had been elected at the 1989 state election three months earlier. At the 2008 election, it was decreased to six members.
