RELIEF WORKERS' VOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 75, 26 September 1938, Page 11

RELIEF WORKERS' VOTES

TALK OF "TRICKERY"

WITHDRAWN CLAUSE

Mr. J. F. Thompson, National candidate for Wairarapa, addressed between i sixty and seventy people in the schoolroom, Kaitoke, on Saturday night. Mr. L. Andrews presided, and the candidate, who spoke on the lines of his Greytown address, was well received. Mr. Thompson said that when speaking at Karori recently, the Hon. P. Fraser accused the National Party of Parliamentary trickery, and said that it could rise to nothing higher. Mr. Thompson said the Minister should be the last to refer to Parliamentary trickery, as an outstanding attempt had been made during the dying hours of last session to secure an amendment to the electoral law. It was, he said, common knowledge that the Government had transferred large numbers of subsidised workers to certain districts held by National candidates, and it was boasted in Socialist quarters that the Government would win the seats by these methods. Mr. Thompson said that the third amendment to the Statutes Amendment Bill, which was introduced in the Legislative Council on September 15 and withdrawn the same day, was apparently designed to allow recently-trans-ferred relief workers to vote in their new electorates. The third clause in the amendment provided that a person who had been in New Zealand for twelve months, but had been unable to fulfil the three months' residential requirements in an electorate should have the right to register as an elector in an electorate where he was at the time of registration. This was agreed to. The Hon. Mark Fagan, Leader of the Council, later asked for a recommittal of the Bill to enable him to move for a deletion of the clause. Mr. Thompson said the Government introduced the amendment and evidently intended to drive it through on the late hours of the last day of the session, but apparently thought better of it. "If this was not an attempt at Parliamentary trickery, then I would like to know what is," said Mr. ThompAfter being accorded a vote of thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were cheered. The meeting concluded with the singing of the National Anthem.