The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1023. AN OPPORTUNITY LOST.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 51, 1 March 1923, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1023. AN OPPORTUNITY LOST.

For the cause ihat lacks assistance, for the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Our Reform friends will, no doubt, I rejoice at the fact that the House of Commons has refused to sanction even so mild an instalment of proportional representation as a bill permitting local, authorities to adopt it by a three-fifths majority. Real reformers, however, —, the more important kind who spell their! name with a small "r"—will not be dis-i couraged. The bill has been previously passed three times by the House of! Lords, and it was only rejected by the Commons by twelve votes. The debate and the result threw discredit not on pro-

portional representation, but on the Commons. All that the bill proposed was that local bodies should be empowered to introduce the reform, and lest they should do so too lightly, there was a safeguard in the shape of a threefifths majority provision. Local bodies in New Zealand have had this power since 1914. The Wellington "Post," in an excellent article on the subject, remarks that "though to the open-minded man the chance of experimenting on a small scale and in a manner that could not possibly do any appreciable harm, and might be of immense value as indicating the lines of future policy in a wider sphere, was a thing to be heartily welcomed, the thorough-going opponent deemed it best to resist the beginnings of evil."'

Our brief report of the debate includes no opinion in favour of the Bill, and does not mention one leader in any of the parties. It is difficult to believe that all the weightiest men were silent. Proportional representation cuts across party lines. The society that is trying to educate opinion to demand the system includes some of the foremost men in the Conservative, Liberal, and Labour ranks, but no party, unless it is the Independent Liberals, is united on the point. The Coalition Government treated the question as an open one, and when the Speaker's Committee recommended the enactment of an instalment of P.R., one Minister moved the amendment, and another opposed it. The "Post" thinks Mr. Lloyd George could have turned the scale eabily if he had so desired, but he was benefiting by the defects in the existing system, and it was not until these defects had again been displayed in November last, and he was out of office, that he spoke out strongly in favour of electoral reform. That is the main obstacle in the way of reform; the party in power is naturally j disinclined to change a system that has worked to its advantage. The division in the British Labour party is curious. The only Labour speaker whose views in the latest debate are given to us said that some members felt that the support accorded the system by their opponents boded no good to Labour. This is simply inability to credit opponents with disinterested motives. This speaker admitted that under P.R. Labour would have gained in November: according to the calculation made by the secretary of the Proportional Representation Society, the Labour gain would have been twenty-five seats.

In our report the case against the Bill was put by Professor Oman, a distinguished historian. Professor Oman is more impressive when dealing with the history of war or estimating the characters of Roman statesmen than he

is as a critic of proportional representation. The system, he says, involves a serious risk of instability in governments, and produces over-representation of minorities. Does not the present system involve the same risk? What of

our own elections in 1914 and 1022? If | there is under P.R. an unstable equality , of parties, the elector ha 3 the satisfac- i

tion of knowing that this is an accurate reflection of popular feeling-, whereas ! under the present system he may be well j aware that opinion wished to produce something, very different. As for Pro- j feasor Oman's second point, P.R. would j never over-represent minorities to the I extent to which certain sections of opinion are liable to be over-represented under the present system. In November ] the Conservatives' total of votes was j much less than half the aggregate, but I they won well over half the seats, and while it took 18.000 votes on the average to elect a Conservative, it took 49,0001 to elect an Independent Lrberal. Can j such a system be seriously defended! J