Grey River Argus SATURDAY, October 6, 1931. LABOUR OUSTED FROM AUSTRALIAN SENATE.

Grey River Argus, 6 October 1934, Page 4

Grey River Argus SATURDAY, October 6, 1931. LABOUR OUSTED FROM AUSTRALIAN SENATE.

The expectation that the recent Federal elections will mean for the Lyons Government a clean sweep of the Senate seats does not signify such a victory as might appear at this distance. So much is to be inferred even from the admission this week by Mr J. A. Lyons himself that the Senate results are such as to call for a radical alteration in the method of election. He intends to consult the other Parties with the object of bringing such a change about, and it is time that an end was put to the trickery of the present method. It means in fact the disfranchisement of probably a substantial majority of the electors, because it is obvious that the United Australia Party has by no means polled half of the votes, whereas it is obtaining the whole of. the seats decided on this occasion. Half of the Senators retire every three years, the term of office being six years, and the six States each have six representatives. In the last Senate the U.A.P. held twenty seats, the Federal Labour Party ten and the Country Party six, whereas in this Senate, Labour is likely to be / left only with three seats, whilethe U.A.P. will have 27, the Coun-

try Party retaining the former half dozen. In New South Wales for instance, the Labour voters in the Senate poll numbered about 530,000, while about 90,000 more votes were east for candidates more adverse to the Government than Labour. The. U.A.P. vote amounted to 690,000 so that while about 620.000 voters obtained not a single Senate seat, all the seats for the State were secured by 690,000 voters. The thing is a form of g-errymander-

I ing. It was the invention of the I ex-Labourite, Mr AV. M. Hughes, and cannot be defended either as a preferential or proportional form of representation. This is shown more strikingly still in the case of the State of Victoria. There the Federal Labour Party has polled the most votes, but does not secure one Senate seat. In Victoria the Labour vote was over 382.000, compared with about 363,000 for the U.A.P., whilst nearly 190.000 votes were cast for Indepndent candidates. It was the second preferences of the latter voters which alone elected the three Senators. In Queensland Labour’s vote amounted to about 210,000, and the U.A.P. vote to 225,000, whilst Independent and Douglas Credit candidates obtain-

ed 50,000 votes, so that 275,000 voters are likely to be unrepresented, whilst 225.000 monopolise the representation, and the issue is decided by the Independents. In South Australia 146.000 electors have obtained the three seats, whereas about 130,000 are not to have even one representative. It is likewise in Western -Australia, where 95,000 voters elected three Senators, ami almost 90.000 are left wi h no repri sen tative. One feature of the system is that in the Senate elections, informal votes were three times as numerous as in the Lower House elections, or 140,000 against 49,000. The Government chose to put up its own candidates at the top of the ballot papers, and thus grouped the candidates to suit the party, instead of placing the

mimes in alphabetical order. The significance of this is revealed by the returning officers, who state that in many cases voters began at. the top of the ballot papers and numbered the names consecutively to the lowest on the list, who obtained the least preference, say twelfth. It is obvious that the preferential voting is not adapted tor a constituency electing three members, and that the time has come for separate ballot papers for each Senate seat. Possibly this is what the Prime Minister proposes. As he remarks, the present position is apt to mean, such a reaction that Labour m-xt time might capture half of the Senate representation, either by a voting majority, or an actual minority. W hat nobody could deny is that the new Senate, w.th but onetwelfth of the members representing Labour, is a caricature of the real strength of Labour sentiment in the electorates, and a gross exaggeration of the strength of the United -Australia Party.