READJUSTMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 237, 6 October 1936, Page 10

READJUSTMENT.

LOBBY QUESTIONS. SEATS IN PARLIAMENT. REVISION OF BOUNDARIES. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. What Parliamentary seats are to go, and where will be the new ones? This question is being asked in the lobbies of the House of Representatives to-day, but some time will elapse before the solution is given to an interesting problem. When the official and detailed figures of the last population census are available from the Government statistician, a statutory process operates automatically, under which the boundaries of the 70 European constituencies are readjusted in line with the distribution of the people.

With the flow of population to the North Island, experience of several readjustments lias been a reduction in the number of South Island seats, and a corresponding increase in the North. This is anticipated with the coming readjustment. To-day the South Island has 29 members, and the North Island 47, the balance of the 80 seats being made up of three Maori constituencies in the North Island, and one in the South.

Boundary Revision. Boundary revision cannot be set in motion until the Government statistician is in a position to provide the North and South Islands' Representation Commissions with population details much jmor& minute in respect to areas than the information already published from district enumerators. The whole Dominion, for this purpose, is divided into small sections with boundaries more restricted than those of the hundreds of local authorities, so that the Commissioners, when finally allocating quotas of electors to give fairly equal representation in Parliament for each thousand voters, may take groups even of a thousand and move them from one electorate into another which, it may be found, has t6 be enlarged. For this reason the process of readjustment may not commence for a month or more, but the Electoral Act requires the statistician .to report these details as early as possible, and following this the Representation Commissions must make their reallocations of the electorates within three months. The Representation Commission for the North Island comprises the SurveyorGeneral and the Commissioners of Crown Lands for Auckland and Taranaki, with two unofficial members appointed by the Government. The South Island Commission will be the Cc.nmissioners of Crown Lands for Westland, Canterbury and Otago, with two others to be appointed shortly by the Government. Both North and South Island Commissions act jointly in the important preliminary stage when they have to take a general survey of the population results of the census and allocate the figures in the separate categories of urban and rural.

Country Quotas. The residents of 64 towns and cities, and those living within four miles of the Chief Post Offices of Auckland, Wei-, lington, Christchurch and Dunedin, come into the urban figures, the remainder being rural population, with the electoral advantage of the addition of 28 per cent to their numSers. This "country quota" has been criticised, but the new Government, though being inclined to readily innovate, has made no change in the system, and the "country quota" will again operate automatically in conformity with a promise given during the election campaign by the Prime Minister, Mr. Savage, that for this Parliament he would not interfere with! the "country quota" system as at present existing. In the last readjustment of electoral boundaries following the census of 1926 the Commissioners calculated that the North Island had a population of 831,813, but the "country quota" enlargement raised the total to 929,358, representing 97,575 nominal electors. The South Island actual total of 512,656 was increased by 64,240 to 576,896. The Commissions, in fixing new boundaries, are directed by Statute to have regard to community interest, facilities of communication and topographical features; and their proposals are announced tentatively in advance in order that objections may be received before the final revision is gazetted.