POPULATION AND POLITICS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 255, 24 July 1937, Page 10

POPULATION AND POLITICS

Most of the readjustments provisionally made in electoral boundaries by the Representation Commissions and in accordance with the distribution of population as revealed by the census last year are geographical, and therefore will be of more interest in territorial Hetail to members of Parliament than to the majority of their~ electors. The aggregate of representation remains the same —/6 European seats in the House of Representatives. And there is nothing in the reports of. the commissions to indicate any appreciable change in the political leanings of future members of Parliament. If anything, there will be a keener struggle than ever for industrialised areas within or adjacent to the largest centres of population. This is due to the urban drift of New Zealand’s sparse population and the trend of development. In two districts only the Parliamentary seat for each is marked for elimination, one being Chalmers, near Dunedin, for which Mr. A. Campbell (Labour) is member in the blouse of Representatives, and the other Oroua, in the Feilding district, for which the Hon. J. G. Cobbe (Opposition) is M.P. But the difference in full community representation will be to the disadvantage of the South Island which loses a seat to the North Island. The North, while losing one, obtains two new seats —Wellington Suburbs (entirely different geographically from the existing electorate so named, but to be known in future as Wellington West) and Otahuhu, virtually an industrial suburb of Auckland. As a result of these provisional changes the North Island will have 48 European members in the. House of Representatives and the South Island 28. those allocations show the preponderance of population in the North, which is actually the smaller island; on the night of the latest census the numerical proportions of European population were: North 938,939, South 552,545 Other changes in boundary alignment do not call for much discussion, although a great deal of local interest will be taken in the territorial alterations of various electorates, both in the cities and in the country districts. Some readjustments as shown in the series of maps published in The Dominion yesterday would almost appear to be anomalous, but in reality they inevitably represent the vagaries of grouped and scattered populations. It is possible, of course, that the inclusion of new territory in one electorate, or the exclusion of areas from another, particularly where they involve an exchange of industrial for rural electors may carry the vagaries into the pollingbooth, upsetting the calculations of candidates and parties. . Several of the alterations in the Wellington electorates must be disturbing the confidence of the sitting members. One or two Ministers of the Crown are confronted with that embarrassment. Under the law, allowance must be made in the redivision of the Dominion into 76 European electorates (as far back as 1881 provision was made for 91) for rural population. The so-called “country quota” is computed on the basis that 28 per cent, is added to the rural population. A glance at the revised electoral map of the Dominion shows that in order to arrive at an exact distribution of representation in accordance with altered population it has been necessary in some instances for the commissions to extend several of the country electorates on a sort of mustering plan, so that members of Parliament may represent people rather than cattle on a thousand hills. Thus two or three of the South Island electorates look inordinately large. . , No real harm would be done if there were fewer electorates with representation so allocated that crowded industrial areas and rural communities could have their interests studied and served m Parliament on a well-balanced principle. Such a distribution, however, is still a counsel of perfection, but. if the drift of population continues toward the centres of industrial development and social amenities, the true balance of fair political representation will turn in favour of the town-dwelling class. It is possible, also, that the people of the South Island, sooner or later, will voice discontent with the present system.