The Victorian Legislative Council (VLC) is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Victoria, Australia; the lower house being the Legislative Assembly. Both houses sit at Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne. The Legislative Council serves as a house of review, in a similar fashion to its federal counterpart, the Australian Senate. Although it is possible for legislation to be first introduced in the Council, most bills receive their first hearing in the Legislative Assembly.

The presiding officer of the Council is the President of the Legislative Council. The Council presently has 40 members serving four-year terms, elected from eight electoral regions each with five members.

History

First Legislative Council

The separate colony of Victoria was proclaimed on 1 July 1851 and writs for the election of the first Legislative Council were issued at the same time. It took some time before the Council was elected and ready to sit. The Legislative Council initially consisted of 30 members, 10 members being nominated by the Lieutenant-Governor and 20 members elected from 16 "electoral districts", with Melbourne electing 3 members, and Geelong and the county of Bourke electing 2 members each. The electors were male British subjects over the age of 21 years, who owned freehold valued at £100 or a householder paying rent of £10 per year, both very large sums at the time. Members of the Legislative Council were unpaid, further restricting participation of those without independent means. The Legislative Council met for the first time in November 1851 at St Patrick's Hall, which had been built in 1847 in Bourke Street, Melbourne. The Legislative Council sat there until the opening of the Parliament House in 1856.

A legislative council is the name given to the legislature, or one of the chambers of the legislature of many nations and colonies.

A member of a legislative council is commonly referred to as an MLC.

History

In the British Empire, the authority under which legislative councils have been constituted has varied: some under the prerogative, others by act of parliament, and some by commission and royal instructions.

List of Legislative Councils

Extant

National

Sub-national

Defunct

National

Sub-national

Nonpartisan legislative support agency

In American English, the term "legislative council" has developed a radically different meaning since the 1930s. Today, it refers to a joint committee with members from both houses of the state legislature, which supervises a staff of attorneys, accountants, and researchers charged with providing strictly nonpartisan support services to the legislature or to particular committees. The concept of the legislative council was first developed in Kansas and was implemented by the Kansas Legislature in 1933. Eventually, a majority of U.S. states adopted legislative councils, but under a variety of names. Kansas still uses a legislative council, although it was converted into the Kansas Legislative Coordinating Council in 1971. Today, legislative councils actually operating under that name exist in the states of Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin. Several states prefer to use the term "commission" for the same thing, including New Jersey and Nevada.

The Legislative Council (Manx: Yn Choonceil Slattyssagh) is the upper chamber of Tynwald, the legislature of the Isle of Man.

It consists of eleven Members (MLCs):

The MLCs are elected by the House of Keys by secret ballot for a term of two years. Four retire every two years, so four MLCs are elected at a time. An MLC must be at least 21 years old and resident in the Isle of Man.

Formerly, the Lieutenant Governor presided over the Legislative Council and over Tynwald Court (a joint session of the Council and the House of Keys). Now, however, the President of Tynwald, who is chosen by the whole Tynwald for a six-year term, is the ex officio President of the Legislative Council, and presides over both the Legislative Council and Tynwald Court, except that the Lieutenant Governor presides once a year on Tynwald Day.

The Fijian Legislative Council was the colonial precursor to the present-day Parliament, which came into existence when Fiji became independent on 10 October 1970.

The first Legislative Council

Immediately after Fiji was ceded to the United Kingdom, on 10 October 1874, the first Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson, established an Executive Council with himself as President and comprising six other Europeans. This was a temporary measure to make policy decisions necessary to found and legitimize the new Colonial Government and to carry out the day-to-day affairs of the Government. With the arrival of Sir Arthur Gordon, on 1 September 1875, a permanent machinery for governing the new colony was established. In addition to the Executive Council, Gordon established a Legislative Council composed entirely of nominated members, of whom six were official (public officers, usually heads of Government departments), including the Governor of Fiji, the Colonial Secretary (the day-to-day executive power), the Chief Justice of Fiji and the Attorney General of Fiji; and four unofficial (representatives of the community not directly employed by the Government) members nominated by the Governor with the approval of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Thus all ten members of the Legislative Council were Europeans.