Brisk Campaign Likely For Mount Albert Seat

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 August 1947, Page 3

Brisk Campaign Likely For Mount Albert Seat

AUCKLAND, August 11.

With every seat counting in a young Parliament where the Government holds a narrow majority, a brisk campaign is expected to precede a byelection in the Mount Albert, electorate caused by the death of Mr A. S. Richards, M.P., last week. Preliminary formalities of gazetting the vacancy in the House and directing the issue of a Writ for the by-election have to be taken and a date for the poll may not be announced for some days, but the Government, with its small margin, is not likely to delay the issue of the writ.

For campaigning purposes, Mount Albert has all the merits‘of compactness. It was one of the new seats established by the Electoral Boundaries Commission last year and covers a relatively small but thickly-populat-ed group of residential suburbs. It was created from about half of the original Roskill electorate with small portions added from Auckland Suburbs, Grey Lynn, and Eden. In the General Election of November, Mr Richards, with 7194 votes, had a clear-cut victory over his National Party opponent, Mr F. A. Hosking, who polled 5417 votes. There are 14,500 electors on the Mount Albert rolls and, although there has been some expansion of housing, there is no material change in voting strength to affect the byelection. THe fact that 2000 Mount Albert electors did not go to the polls in November will add emphasis to the need for intensive campaigning by both parties. There has been only one by-elec-tion in the life of the present Parliament. That was caused in Avon by the death of Mr D. G. Sullivan. The seat was retained by Labour but Mr Sullivan’s General Election majority of 5161 was reduced to 4091.