Electoral "Reform"

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17862, 7 September 1923, Page 8

Electoral " Reform"

Unlike Mr H. E. Holland, Mr Wilford is quite well disposed towards the Legislature Amendment Bill, which proposes to effect a change in the electoral law. The Bill, we may remind our readers, proposes that the city constituencies shall in each centre bo grouped, aad the election in these centres (to choose four members each for the Christchurch and Dunedin areas and five each for the Wellington and Auckland areas) held under the PJB. Bystem. The other 58 constituencies will remain singlemember districts, and in these tho method of election will be I ''preferential voting." Mr Holland | is opposed to the Bill because lie is afraid it will cost his party some seats in the . city areas without helping him in the other districts. We suggested, in our earlier comments on the Bill, that as tho Liberals had nothing to lose in tho citiea and might not lose much in the other districts, they might not greatly dislike the Bill. It is as wo expected. Mr Wilford indicates that he is prepared to support the Bill, although he professes that I what he really desires is "proportional I ''MEffeae.tttation with the country

quota." We hare advanced several objections, each of which seems to us to be fatal, against P.R., and none of th<?so objections has been fairly met. The most important of these arises out of the certainty that Parliament will consist of several groups, none 01 which -will be a majority, although it is probable that the Reform Party would obtain an absolute majority at lirst. In such a Parliament a Government which could carry on could net bo obtained except as the result oi intrigue and bargaining;, and it .could carry on only through further bargainings and alliances. This would not make for honest and conscientious politics, and it would also involve a defeat of the popular will, for there would be no popular authority for the postelection strategy which would be necessary. How the advocates of P.R. would overcome this difficulty they have never ventured to explain. Then thero is the general principle of P.R. It professes to be a strictly logical theory, aiming at, and achieving, a Parliament which shall exactly mirror public opinion. It could do this only if tho country were made one huge constituency. This, the advocates of P.R. admit, would not be practicable; and so they proceed to give away the basis of their creed by proposing constituencies of some arbitrary size, five-member or seven-member or lea-member areas. Why there is in a, live-member arrangement of districts a virtue wanting iu a nineteen-zuember ot a thirty-eight-member arrangement they will not explain. But we need not now go over all the objections to the P.R. system. The time has come when 'the Liberals should tell us exactly what they mean by ''proportional "representation witli the maintenance "of the country quota. 1 ' How would they group the seats? How many seats would there bo? How would the candidates cover their electorates in the campaign? We suspect that the advocates of P.R. tyave not given any closer consideration to these practical questions than to the weak spots in tho theory of their method of election.