AUSTRALIAN POLL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 198, 21 August 1943, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN POLL

JAP. INTERFERENCE

Many Incidents In Voting In Operational Areas N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 12.30 p.m. SYDNEY, this day. Men of an Australian anti-aircraft battery at a northern station in the middle of recording their votes for to-day's Federal election had to drop everything to man their guns and drive off a Japanese reconnaissance plane. The Incident was one of many, humorous and serious, encountered by army officers acting as returning officers in operational areas. Senior officers have used conveyances from aircraft to jeeps and camels to canoes to secure fhe votes of troops spread over tens of thousands of miles of country, much of it so remote that there has never been a ballot-box within 300 miles before. So efficient'has been the army ballot organisation that most soldiers recorded their votes well before polling day. Labour's Faith in Curtin "Personality versus policy" will be the great factor dominating today's Australian Federal election. While tne joint Opposition parties have placed before the Commonwealth electors a plan for the remaining war years and the postwar years, the Labour Government has pinned its faith entirely on the prestige of the Prime Minister, Mr. J. Curtin.

Labour election propaganda has had as its slogan "Return the Curtin Government." Party aspects have been kept severely in the background. Labour's only promise to the electors has been to get on with the war. Its candidates have avoided even the lightest step on the customarily contentious planks of the party platform. "Those men best qualified for public life; irrespective of party allegiances," says the Sydney Morning Herald, advising Australians on how to vote at to-day's polling. Assessing the merits of the main parties, the paper says that in leadership, unity and administrative strength the joint Opposition is weaker than' Labour. By selecting candidates for their capacity and not for party, the electors can assist the desirable end of achieving a stable National Government.

"Vote for a stronger Parliament rather than a stronger party," advises the Daily Telegraph editorially, "for a strong Parliament rather than a strong party is the guarantee of your democracy."

There are 416 candidates competing to-day for the vacant seats in the Australian Commonwealth Parliament—7s seats in the House of Representatives and 10 vacancies in the Sena*. When Parliament dissolved the position in the House of Representatives was: Labour 36, Opposition 36, and Independents 2. Labour governed with the support of the two Independents, Messrs. Wilson and Coles, giving them a Speaker and a majority of one in the House. To secure a clear majority Labour must win two additional seats. The state of parties in the Senate was: Labour 17, Opposition 19, a total of 36 seats. Of the 19 Senate vacancies Labour held 14, and will, therefore, have to win 16 seats at the elections to obtain a majority. Apart from the Australian Labour party, the United Australia party and the United Country party (the latter two formed the Opposition), 25 organisations have candidates in the field. Fewer than half of the candidates are nominees of the Government and Opposition parties. Labour has endorsed 95 candidates and the united Opposition parties 104. The two most inauential and closely organised of the other parties are the Liberal Democratic party and the One Parliament for Australia party.