The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, November 12, 1949. ANOTHER “RIGMAROLE”

Grey River Argus, 12 November 1949, Page 4

The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, November 12, 1949. ANOTHER “RIGMAROLE”

( W Hn jST he doubtless endorses, ' however tacitly, the profession of his Party that they would not abolish any one of the many provisions which the Government has made especially for tin' family, the' Nationalist candidate for Westland is not inclined to give those benefits any recognition. On the contrary, his idea has evidently been to see if he cannot find anything that would suggest a disregard of the family en the Government’s part—and he seems to imagine he has succeeded in a direction where nobody else would have thought of looking. The family, he thinks, has, of all things, been deprived of influence —political influence, presumably —because electrical boundaries are now determined on the principle of one man one vote, in accordance with the basic idea of democracy. Air O’Regan denies any desire to see the country quota restored, but. implies that electorates should be delimited according to the number. not of voters, but of men, women and children. He does not suggest that the age for the franchise should be lowered, but that, minors should have influence by being counted in the electorate quotas. What difference this would make is not stated, but probably the inference is that, by counting in minors, those electorates formerly favoured by the country quota would retain some equivalent of it still. In other words, the non-voting population is presumed to be greater in those areas than in urban districts, but if so the difference is probably insignificant. and the argument is largely a debating point only. Tin' great majority of the working class is in the urban areas, and the working class has families at feast as large as those of the rest cf the community, so that there is not much in the contention that to compute quotas for electorates on the number of actual electors is an injustice to persons who are not electors. Tin l days of plural voting rightly are a thing of Hie past, and it is a reactionary notion that the value of votee .should differ in electorates according to the number of nonvoters they might contain. Property interests of any kind are no longer regarded in democratic

co tin tri cs as qualifications for the Parliamentary franchise, and no sound reason is given for the claim that electors should possess electoral privileges beyond that signified by “one man one vote’’. Air O’Regan’s view of family interests must be narrow if .he would pit town against country, just as was the view of his Party when, not only in this respect, but also in that of property, it fought to retain the country quota, lie cannot deny that the family benefit is vastly more important than any quibble over electoral boundaries, nor could he forget that his Party only allowed 2s weekly per child in excess of two, where family income was not above £3 5s weekly, whereas the Labour Party provides 10s for every child regardless of family Income. Widows with children now receive from £4 10s in the case of one child, to £5 10s in the case of three, coinpared with the £1 to £2 his Party allowed them. Nor did his Party make any provision for the orphan, who now receives £1 5s weekly. Ago pensioners with children receive up to £6 weekly .compared with £2 (where there were three children) obtainable from the previous regime. In the ease of invalids with children, the family receives up to £0 10s weekly in the case of three, compared with 17s 6d to 19s (id weekly (and then only if blind) under the former Government. Likewise the miner pensioners with children obtain up to £6 10s weekly for the family if it comprises three children. Another point Air O’Regan might, examine—along with the electoral boundaries—is the provision for the family under the headings of hospital benefits (totalling nearly two millions per annum), maternity benefits (£916,120 in the past, year), medical benefits (£2,306,886), pharmaceutical benefits (£1,793,159), and other benefits totalling £861,913. Pull employment is also a family guarantee. It is significant that rural interests are asking the Government to extend its housing benefits so that families of farm workers

shall have greater amenities than their employers are prepared to provide. The foregoing may be only another “rigmarole,” in Mr O’Regan’s estimation, but at least the facts quoted can no more be discounted by a mere phrase of the kind than by ignoring them in order to emphasise such family “benefits” as the gauging of the size of electorates otherwise than bv the number of electors.