SOUTH WILL LOSE SEATS

Evening Star, Issue 25618, 19 October 1945, Page 4

SOUTH WILL LOSE SEATS

BIGGER RURAL AND SMALLER URBAN ELECTORATES ADVANTAGE TO CITIES (Special.) WELLINGTON, Oct. 19. The abolition of the country quota immediately raises the questions of how many electorates will be affected, what particular electorates of a rural nature will go out of existence, and what urban electorates are likely to come into being. These are questions on which there will be much speculation for months to come, but on which it is impossible at the moment to give any definite information. Nothing final will be known until the new Representation Commission has completed its investigations and furnished its report. Until then it would be idle to speculate with any degree of certainty, but there is likely to be the loss of seats in the South Island and the addition of more seats in the North Island. For example, it has been suggested that electorates such as Motueka (held by the Hon. C. F. Skinner, Govt.), Temuka (held by Mr Acland, National), and Clutha (Mr Roy, National) will go out of existence, and that new electorates will be formed in Remuera, Hutt Valley, and Christchurch. city. . The Representation Commission will have to start completely afresh the job of dividing New Zealand into 76 electorates, and it is possible that 76 entirely new units will eventuate. There is, however, one electorate—Bay of Islands—that will to a large extent retain its present character, as it seems fairly evident that it cannot be carved about. The electorates bordering upon the Bay of Islands—Kaipara and Marsden—will probably be affected .to a greater extent. The only thing that can be said with any certainty on the boundary question is that electorates which are wholly or substantially rural will increase in size, and those entirely urban will diminish in size. As evidence of the fact that a substantial change may take place in the whole of the 76 electorates with the abolition of the country quota, it may be recalled that on the last revision of electoral boundaries, where there was no such major change as the abolition of the quota, and where the commissions were required by law to conform as far as possible to the present boundaries—and did so in many cases so as not to upset the balance in no-license districts—there were only three electorates where no alteration in,boundaries took place. THE NEW BASIS. The new Bill alters the basis for computing the size of the electorates by changing it from total population. On the face of it, this may seem a drastic change, but in actual fact the change may make little difference in the incidence, and may be regarded mainly as political. Certainly, in restricting the computation to adult . population, the figures indicating the size of electorates will be smaller, but seeing that the total population figures will be diminished accordingly, it is possible that, on a comparative basis, the change may have little effect on the size of any of the electorates.

However, it may give a slight advantage to those areas where the proportion of children to adults is relatively lower. Under the present system, In those cases, it takes a larger area to produce the required size for the electorate. Under the new scheme a similar area will produce the desired result, and if that happens to apply to city areas it will help in giving them a greater number of seats in Parliament than are possessed by the rural areas. STABILISED NO-LICENSE AREAS. The provision in the Bill relating to the no-license districts is intended to stabilise the present boundaries of the existing' no-license districts, and no doubt special machinery provisions will be made to enable the. no-license polls in those areas to be held separately. They will probably, however, (as at present) be held on the same day as the General Election and the national licensing issue. The point nbout retaining the present no-license districts intact is that, on the redistribution of electorates it is likely that in most cases there will be no resemblance between any of the hew electorates and. any of the present nolicense districts. It is well known that in the past representation commissions have experienced considerable difficulty m retaining the boundaries of certain electorates so that no interference was made with existing hotels. The commissions have made all sorts of tortuous and irregular boundary lines to avoid having to place hotels in nolicense districts, and it is understood that at the last revision the commissions felt they had gone to the extreme limits possible in that respect. The Maori electorates are not made the subject of revision by the Representation Commission. It is understood that the basis of revision ,is largely a matter of tribal interests, together with topographical considerations; and population does not play a dominant part. The whole of the South Island is in the Southern Maori Electorate, but the Maori population in that electorate is only a matter of some hundreds, as opposed to thousands in the other Maori electorates. Of the 76 European electorates in New Zealand, nine can be regarded as mainly rural, 34 as mixed urban and rural, and 33 as mainly urban. The

total number of electors enrolled for the 1943 election was: North Island, 684,310; South Island, 335,887. The total number of votes cast in that election were: North Island, 612,498;