Marton move idea ‘shocks’ leader

Press, 27 September 1982, Page 6

Marton move idea ‘shocks’ leader

PA Auckland - The leader of the Social Credit Party, Mr Beetham, said in Auckland yesterday that he was shocked by reports that his home town of Marton might be taken away from the Rangitikei seat in a Boundary reshuffle.

?Mr Beetham, who had a 795-vote majority over his National opponent in Marton in last year's General Election. is adamant that Social Credit will strenuously resist any such boundary shift.

He said that Rangitikei was apparently going to have Marton, the “heart” of the electorate, "torn out of it" quite unnecessarily. He said he was basing his comments on newspaper reports which indicated that, according to draft electoral boundaries under considera-

tion by the Boundaries Commission. only Marton was to be taken out of Rangitikei. It was proposed that the township should go into the adjacent Waitotara seat.

Mr Beetham said it appeared he was the only ■ leader of three major political parties who was to have the town where he lived wrenched from the electorate he represented.

It seemed that the electorates represented by the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon (Tamaki), and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rowling (Tasman), would remain virtually untouched. Mr Beetham said many people had predicted that, having failed by all other means to dislodge him from Rangitikei, which he won in a 1978 by-election, the “establishment” would resort to doing so through boundary

changes. “These predictions appear to be coming true, but I am surprised that the establishment has made the tactic so blatantly obvious.” he said.

"Marton, the town in which I live and which is apparently to be abstracted quite arbitrarily from the Rangitikei electorate, has always been regarded as the centre of Rangitikei for all purposes. "Clearly, other less traumatic options were available to the Surveyor-General’s office for removing a surplus of electors from the Rangitikei electorate,” he said. There was no way, under the terms of the Electoral Act, that the region's community of interest could remain intact without Marton’s being included, said Mr Beetham.