Dunedin North.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17460, 22 May 1922, Page 6

Dunedin North.

The by-plection in Dunedin North, to fill the Parliamentary vacancy caused by the death of Mr Kellett, may become unusually interesting if the various parties all put forward their candidates. When Mr G. M. Thomson, the then sitting Member, was defeated m 1914, by Mr Walker, the official Labour candidate, the voting was: Walker 4073, Thomson 3751. Mr Walker, like the Labour candidates in other districts (Lytt-elton, for example) had the assistance of the Liberals. -Under the Act of 1914, which made provision for the allocation of the votes' of soldiers outside New Zealand, the leader of the Opposition, Sir Joseph Ward, nominated as the recipient of the Opposition" votes nearly all the official Labour candidates in those districts in which he had no candidate of his own. It was plain, therefore, that the Reform voters were much the most numerous body in Dunedin North. In 1919, Mr Walker was opposed by Mr Kellett, who stood as an Independent Labour man, so far removed from the extreme Left that the Reform voters willingly supported him. Mr Walker secured the regular Labour voters, and, as before, he may have received the votes of moet of the Liberals. Mr Kollett received the Reform vote, and the vote of moderate men in other parties. The result was that Mr Kellett polled 4784 votes against Mr Walker's 3978. The valid votes were thus divided at the two elections: 1914 1919 per cent. per cent. Walker ... 52 Walker ... 45.4 Thomson ... 48 : Kellett ... 54.6 The only conclusion one can draw from these figures, if the. Liberals in 1919 vpted for Mr Kellett, is that the voters are thus divided: ' Per cent. Reform ... ... ••• 48 Labour ... Liberal ... ... ••• If the Liberals in 1919 voted for Mr j Walker, as in 1914, then one must assume that the strength of both the Labour and Liberal parties declined in j;he interval between the two elections. Unless some great change has taken place ill public opinion the seat .should be recaptured by the Government. Mr Wilford, we 'should say, will not care to let the contest go by default, seeing that Mr Kellett had joined Mr Statham, • with whom Mr Wilford has made an alliance. But he may reflect ihat if Labour and the Government, put up candidates the result of the election will be to demonstrate with disastrous plainness that the Liberal party amounts to nothing in the public estimation. In that case he may think it best not to appear to have any serious intentions regarding this seat. And yet he must be aware that in his position as a Party Leader, and the Leader of a Party which he clajms is really the Party the country has been waiting for, he cannot very -well refrain from appearing to welcome a .test of his claims. The contest may very well turn out to be a practical demonstration of the fact that there are really only two parties in the countryReform and Labour.