METHOD OF ELECTION

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 89, 17 April 1925, Page 6

METHOD OF ELECTION

CHOICE BY COUNCIL URGED.

Referring to the very unsatisfactory position which has arisen in connection with the Mayoralty, Councillor H. D. Bennett, speaking to a "Post" reporter to-day, expressed the view that it was tune another method of electing the Mayor was.decided upon, and he suggested that the council, not the general body of electors, should select the Mayor "No one will say that the present .method ot selecting the Mayor is at all satisfactory;, said Councillor Bennett. "Rightly or. wrongly, the Labour Party has decided to make a party matter of it, and it is clear that unless the anti-Socialistic electors reduce their candidates to one there will be extreme danger of the Labour candidate winning every time. The difficulty now being experienced. in Wellington should surely provide the necessary evidence of the need for Parliament to take a hand and amend the Municipal Corporations Act so as to allow the Mayor to be elected by the councillors, llie principle is adopted in most other public bodies, and there does not seem to be any reason why such a. chance should not be brought about immediately as regards city or town councils. in such circumstances, if it came to a matter of party politics, the Mayor would always be elected from the group which held the strongest position in the elected council. That is as it should be i '"h pr°P?sal to tm's effect was adopted by the Wellington City Council, and was embodied in a remit to a recent municipal conference, held in Christcluirch, but was turned down " Mr Bennett added that lie had attended that conference, and that no case was then brought up suc h as had occurred in Wellington in the present instance to assist in carrying- the resolution through, and the majority of. the «c cgnfes, having had no similar diffi culty decided to reject the remit and to leave things as they were. "So far as Wellington is concerned," concluded Mr. Bennett, "there is ample evidence upon the point, for the present difficulty is only an accentuation of similar previous cases."