TASMANIAN ELECTIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 101, 30 April 1909, Page 7

TASMANIAN ELECTIONS.

* HELD UNDER A NEW SYSTEM. By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright. (Received April 30, 10.8 a.m.) HOBART, This Day. The general elections being held here to-day are conducted under the HareClark system. Tile Labour party is confident of polling heavily against the Government. The elections are being held under the Have-Clark preferential voting- and proportional vote-distributing system — an adaptation of the scheme nrst propounded by i\lr. Hare nearly' a centuiy ago. Tasmania has been divided into five districts, and six members are to be returned lor each. Tho Labour party has twenty nominess in the field, four for Bass, three for Wilmot, six for Darwin, three for Franklin and four for Denison. One of the candidates tor Denison, Mr. Gilbert Rowutrec, having left the Labour party, is standing as an Independent Labourite, in response to requisitions, including one signed by 134 members of the .tiobart Wharf Labourers' Union. The other candidates are nearly all standing as | Liberals. Only a few of them can be ! classed as Conservatives. Apart from the question of the administration of the Education Department, the chief issues are the Labour party's candidates against all the otheia, the substitution of an unimproved land value and income tax for the present general property tax on land and improvements, and Legislative Council reform. Tha Labour party's candidates are pledged" for the abolition of the Legislative Council. Ministers, and most of the other candidates, are advocating unimproved capital value land tax and Legislative Council lel'orm. In the Old Countiy Lord Courtney has many years been a strenuous advocate of proportional representation, and last year introduced a Bill to oflect that object, but it failed to become law. There is a society to promote tho reform, its declared objects being :—l.: — 1. To reproduce the opinion of the electors in Parliament and other public bodies in their true pioportions. 2. To secure that the majority of electors shall rule, and all considerable minorities shall be heard. 3. To give electors a wider freedom in the choice of representatives. 4. To give representatives greater independence from the financial and other pressure of small sections of constituents. 5. To ensure to parties representation by their ablest members. It proposes to do this by uniting existing constituents into larger ones, returning three or more members each ; give each constitueucy so formed membeis proportionate to its electorate, the total number of the House of Commons being the same as at present, or smaller.