THE CLOSED DOOR

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 56, 9 March 1929, Page 8

THE CLOSED DOOR

EXCLUSION OF BUSINESS

A MISSING LINK .

(Written by S. Saunders.) The newspapers and the newspaper correspondents' again are complaining that the business men of the Dominion are not 1 bearing their fair share of the burden inseparable from the government- of the country. This old story was revived by Sir JPrancis Bell on the eve of'the recent General Election, when ho told tho Chambers of Commerce, in effect, that {hey had no right to expect muclr serious attention from tho Government while their members refused to enter Parliament. Tho story was reiterated in one / form or another by, correspondents who had interviewed authorities on the subject and been told polities' had no attraction for business men. If this really were the case it would remain only to regrot tho lack of patriotism and ambition on the part of tho captains of industry and the masters of finance. ■ There as good reason for thinking, however, that the disinclination of merchants and financier* to enter the political arena is due rather to tho existence of a sy3tom of election which would place them at a grave disadvantage than to any indifference to tho welfare of the community at large. ,A business man aspiring to a place in Parliament naturally would look ,about for a city seat with which his personal .interests were associated. A rural constituency given over to .agricultural-and pastoral pursuits would not appeal to him, nor in such a constituency would he appeal to the electors. But in a city constituency he probably'would be known to only a [comparatively small section, of the voters. . ' Hia main .activities': would' have been confined to his own office his ,club, resorts where the discussion of politics and politicians is not encouraged, if not absolutely, tabooed. The great body of electors never .would; have seen him, and never would have thought of voting for him. THE PEOSPECT.. All this would have been inevitable under, the existing system of election. Take the' case of the twenty-five city electorates aft the recent election, eight in Auckland, six in Wellington, six in Christchurch, and five in Dunedin. -In Auckland Labour, with ; 36,754 votes, approximately, secured four seats, Lib-eral-United with 32,990 votes four seats, and Reform with 19,855 votes none.' Had these eight electorates been grouped together in one constituency under a sound system of proportional representation, Reform in all probability would .have captured two seats and each of the other two parties three. In Wellington,'under'lhe samo system, Keform would have/taken a:seat from Labour, while in ; Christchurch Liberal-United, .which was left without any representation at all, would have taken one scat from Reform and one from Labour. In Dunedin the' luck, of- the ballot lay with, Eeform which secured two seats with 13,283 votes, whilo Liberal-United with 13,288 votes and Labour with 18,250 votes, secured only one apiece," the fifth seat going to .Sir Charles Statham, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who stood as an Independnt and defeated his Labour opponent by 6022 votes to 4251. In Christchurch both the Reform successful candidates and two of the v four successful Labour candidates were returned by minority votes! Here tho luck was distinctly with Labour, as with^2B,37B votes it secured four of the six'seats while Lib-eral-United, as already' stated,, with 22,378 votes did not secure a single seat, its nearest approach to success being in the Riccarton contest, where a neophyte of very considerable, promise pressed the sitting Roform member to a margin of only forty-five votes, de ; I spite tho pressure of a Labour candidate in the field. . All these facts have been stated before. Their iteration is necessary to illustrate the difficulties that would beset ttie business man as a candidate for Parliament. ■ HAPHAZARD RESULTS. The results of this kind are not peculiar to the recent election,- it is scarcely necessary to say. They have occurred at every General Election since the three party system of representation became established in this country. At the olection following upon the 'conclusion of the war and the dissolution of the National Cabinet .tho Reform Party, with-206,461 votes, secured forty-four of the seventy-six European seats,, while the Liberal Party, with 196,337 votes, secured twenty-two seats, the Labour Party, with 127j042 votes, eight seats, and the Independents, with 12,345 votes, tw.b seats. At tho election of 1922 _ the comfortable Reform majority disappeared, and it was a patchi ""-up party, with the, assistance 1' of three of the four Maori members, that carried on ,the business of the country for the next three years. - Then came the "More business in Government and less, government in business" campaign of 1925 which gave Reform the biggest majority known in, the House of Representatives, with, the single exception of the culminating triumph of Mr. Seddon on his last appeal to the electors in 1905.- Thiß was followed, only four months ago,- by another swing of the pendulum and the debacle of Reform to illustrate afresh "the mutability of constituencies. With such a system of olection and with such re-, suits how-could a business man of first:ciass standing be reasonably oxpected to seek a seat in Parliament! Rendering inyaluablo services to the Dominion "in the cool' shades of the Legislative Council, where the business community 'is not unrepresented, Sir I'raneis Bell cau afford to chide business men for not seeking a rebuff from some single,.electorate; but he cannot re illy, expect them to invite such' an experience when he knows full well that by tho present? System of voting the door of the House of Representatives is'definitely closed against them.