MR HAMILTON AND THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22083, 4 May 1937, Page 13

MR HAMILTON AND THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM

I TO THE EDITOR OF TUB PRESS.

Sir,~-Having watched the speeches of the Hon. Adam Hamilton with the interest due to the Leader of the Opposition, I have observed that so far he has given no hint of what his policy will be if and when he attains the Treasury benches. Several times he has twitted the Government with having won the election on a minority vote, but that, an incident of the present dishonest electoral gamble, is neither new nor startling. It is a fact that Mr Massey, though ■ in power from July. 1912. until May 1925. never ofice polled a majority of the electors! In 1925 Mr Coates was said to have "swept the country," but the votes polled for his Government totalled only 38 per cent, of the whole.* Accordingly there is nothing novel or alarming in the fact that

the Labour Party is over-represented in the present Parliament. Our so* called majority system usually prevents majority rule, just as effectively as it precludes the proper representation of minorities. .What is really alarming in Mr Hamilton s utterances is that we look in vain for any proposal to amend the electoral law. The Coalition Government could readily have done so, and some of their supporters desired the change. The defects of the present system—if it can be dignified by the name of a system—are notorious and obvious, and Mr Hamilton and his colleagues in the late Government must have been fully aware of them. Yet they refused to submit, even to consider, proposals to remove them. Reading between the lines of his speeches, one can realise what Mr Hamilton is aiming at. With a view to avoiding triple contests the Opposition is to be mobilised. Men who dare to call themselves independent candidates are to be ostracised —are to be made the victims of a vindictive vendetta —even though independent opinion is the very salt of public life. Tt is assumed that dissensions will arise between the members of the party in power, and so in due course Mr Hamilton and his friends will reap the benefit which the existing electoral Jew always offers to the strongest party. "The beat laid schemes of mice and men pang aft aglea." however. There will be an ever-increas-ing accretion of new voters at every election. Thanks to the monstrous blockade of land—-a matter, by the way. about which jthe Leader of the Opposition has so far been silent—it is becoming increasingly difficult for any man to employ himself. An increasing proportion of the people, therefore, must be content to compete in what is called the labour market, 2nd hence the majority will be living from hand to mouth. Everybody will have the franchise, however, and Mr Hamilton will And that businessmen, for whom apparently he has a particular penchant, will form a decreasing quota of our population. Accordingly it reemires no peculiar insight to realise that, unless we adopt the system of proportional representation, the Labour Party will monopolise the representation in every centre of population, which is another way of saying that their opponents will be permanently disfranchised as effectively as if they were denied the right to vote at eft^^ Wellington, May 1, 1937.