The Canterbury Seats.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17632, 8 December 1922, Page 8

The Canterbury Seats.

Canterbury supporters of the Reform j j Party hare reason to be quite satisfied j ! with the result of the elections in this j t province. The iinal returns in nil the j | constituencies are not yet available, as j j a number of absent voters' votes have j • still to be received, but only in j i electorate, Kaiapoi. is it possible for j ! these to affect the result. The position j j if. Mr Buddo defeats Mr David Jones | i will be, ;is compared -with the last elec- | j tion. thr.t. the Liberals will have gained j j one seat, Kaiapoi, and lost one, Christ- ; j church East; Labour will have gained j j one, Christchureh East: and Reform j j will have lost, one, Kaiapoi, but. will | | have a straight-out Reformer in j | Tiniaru. The Liberals will be repre senteu, as in 1919, by four members, of whom one is Mr Lsitt, who will not plav the Liberal-"Red" game; Labour i v.ill have four, a air. of one; while J Reform will have live. In the event j of Mr Jones proving the victor in i Kaiapoi, the Liberal representation will j | sink to three and Reform will have j j six members. Throughout the province Reform polled well. Mr Audi~.v ni-.'i J a strong opponent in Mr Forb.'S, li:e j sitting member for Hurunui, and in.»de a good fight under the circumstances. Tlio result of the contest for Kaiapoi is, as already indicated, as yet undecided. But it is evident that Mr Buddo owes the possibility of his eventual success to the fact that He received the bulk of the Labour votes. The Inform candidates in Christchureh Last and South and Avon did considering the strength of the opp<>oi tion that they had to meet. We regret Mr Macartney's defeat in Lyttciton, but it may be noted that although there was a considerable increase in th.s total vote as compared with the previous election, Mr McO'ombs's majority remains just about the same as it wns then. "We could have wished that the result in Riccarton had been different, but Mr Kyle deserves congratulations for having made such a close iiuich with so experienced a campaigner as Mr Witty, who enjoyed all the advantages accruing from long representation of tho constituency. Sir Heaton llhodee's comfortable victory in Ellesmere over an opponent whose success had been loudly predicted by Liberal newspapers, is all the more welcome to his> innumerable friends because of the • ungenerous criticism to which he had been subjected. Mr Nosworthy retained the Ashburton seat as easily as was expected. Mr Rolieston, in a poll that was nearly a thousand votes heavier than in 1919, won the Timaru seat from the Labour candidate with something in hand, and Mr. Burnett disposed of the rumours that Temuka waa going to turn over to Mr "Wilford by defeating his Liberal-Labour opponent with several hundred votes to spare. Mr Bitchener's success in Waitaki had never been in doubt. The one great surprise effected in Canterbury was the defeat of Dr. Thaeker for Christchureh East at the hands of a strong Labour can die ate, Mr H. T. Armstrong, well known in trade l union circles and possessing some experience as a member of the City Council. Dx. Thaeker seemed to many people to be firmly entrenched, and his overthrow was the sensation of the evening. Ho will be more missed than mourned in Parliament, where his speeches ad/led little to the sum of human knowledge and nothing ,to the dignity of the House. Hardly less sensational was Mr Isitt's sweeping victory in. Christchureh North, where he scored a majority of more than eighteen hundred votes. His success had been anticipated with confidence for several days, and tlw amount of support he received may bo regarded bs an effective answer to the attacks made upon him, and as a satisfactorily vigorous expression of the public disapproval of the importation into a political contest of the element of bigoted sectarianism. - The result of the elections in Canterbury, is to disprove effectively the oiaim nuule by Opposition ai\d writers that the province was to experience a, wave of Liberalism. The return of certainly five, and posefibly six, pledged supporters of Mr Massey shows that Cariterbury wa« not to )>e misled into following the will-o'-the-wisp of "Wilfordism.