ELECTORAL REFORM

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 March 1922, Page 5

ELECTORAL REFORM

DEMOCRACY AND DISASTER. MR. FOAVLDS INTERVIEWED. i (Special to the Star.) CHRISTCHURCH, March 13. “I don’t want to talk politics, at any rate, party politics,” said the Hon. G. Fowlds to a “Lyttelton Times” reporter’s request for an interview on the political situation. “I think,” Air. Fowlds added, “New Zealand had been carried along a road perilously near disaster by the operation of the Party, or rather the “Parties” system. If we don’t call a halt soon, we shall get into serious trouble. It was bad enough in the old days when we had a Parliament and Government representing a small majority of voters, with a large minority of voters entirely unrepresented, but under to-day’s conditions, in other countries besides our own, a comparatively small minority of voters may easily have an overwhelming majority in Parliament, and so control the Government. Democratic institutions cannot long survive under an electoral system giving such results, and a growing number of good men who could, and would, lender effective service to the State will decline to offer themselves as candidates under the present system. The most thoughtful and patriotic men of all parties in the Old Country, and in other countries, are gradually coming to realise the serious menace to representative Government inlierent in an electoral system -which fails to secure a representative Government. Tho present

t system gave a decided advantage to the i Conservative Party in New Zealand at the last election, but in the recent (lection in Canada, the system oper- - ated disastrously for the Conserva- • tives. If Air. Massey who has frequently confessed his belief in proportional representation fails to pass a 3 Bill next session in time for the genei ral election at the end of the year, 1 then I think the people would be justified in making that the test ques- ; tion at the elections, and both the L Liberal and Labour parties should lay aside their bickerings and vote-split-ting, in order to secure an electoral system which would, in future, give both parties their just proportion of ■ representation, which would go a long way to save democracy from the colutpsc which is inevitable, if the present system is continued.”