“All the rivers and all the streams that drain into the Murray River would be a single state, and obviously because of that, I'm calling it ‘Murray’," he said.
“From where the northern borders are we'd run south nearly to Melbourne, certainly to Seymour.
“You could also just cut out Melbourne and make the rest of Victoria a separate state, but for one with the interests of northern Victorians and southern NSW people, I would include the Murray basin, so we'd have Bendigo and all the towns — Shepparton, Mildura.”
Mr Quilty said he had pencilled in Echuca as the capital.
“It's on the river, it's in the centre, it's not a very big place so it would be a small capital with distributed management, which would avoid a lot of the issues,” he said.
But Committee for Greater Shepparton chief executive Sam Birrell disagreed with Mr Quilty's proposal and said regional Victoria would instead benefit from greater connection with a global city such as Melbourne.
“I don't agree with his call; Victoria's future strength is through growing its regional cities and linking them with Melbourne, not further dividing us,” Mr Birrell said.
“There's benefits to Victoria being connected to a global city, and to try and create something that divides us off from a global city is not the way forward.
“It would create a new level of bureaucracy; we're more interested in connecting Victoria physically and culturally with Melbourne.”
Mr Quilty has recently been calling for a ‘Rexit’ — a ‘regional exit’ — citing the need for regional Victoria to have its own separate governance distinct from the cities, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The current measures we are seeing are focused entirely on Melbourne or Sydney, and as a result the regions have suffered massive damage, both socially and economically,” he said.
16°C