THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, JUNE 15th., 1920. AUSTRALIAN LABOUR AND “P.R.”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume X, Issue 154, 15 June 1920, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, JUNE 15th., 1920. AUSTRALIAN LABOUR AND “P.R.”

While in New Zealand there is so much being said about the undoubted virtues of a system of proportional representation, and the party in power is being continually twitted by those who are not—and particularly by the Labour party—with being representative of a mere minority of the electors, it is a little strange to note what Labour in Australia is saying on the like subject. A recent cable message from Sydney informed us that, at the Commonwealth Labour Conference then sitting in Melbourne, a resolution had been passed in favour of a reversion to single electorates. That this decision was not reached without a pretty full discussion is shown by the further statement that it was the result of three nights of its debate. It is not, perhaps, altogether difficult to surmise the main consideration that has weighed with Australian Labour in discarding the multiple electorates to which alone, of course, the theory of proportional representation can be practically applied. Labour is not at all by itself in being much inclined to judge the soundness of principles by the results of their testing in practice. But probably the disposition in this direction is stronger among the manual workers than among the members of any other class. Although they are given very much to listen with very open ears to many plausible theories that are placed before them for the delectation of their fond imaginations of .a possible industrial Utopia, they are quite as quick in condemning them if, when the chance comes for giving them a trial, they do not at once answer all their highest expectations. Labour, with the memory that it has of its long and weary fight for recognition, has, perhaps naturally, developed a marked impatience to see rapid results from the exercise of the power which it has at length'succeeded in acquiring. From this point of view, it can be quite understood why the Australian workers, while their fellows in Great Britain and New Zealand are loudly advocating the introduction of some system designed to secure proportional representation, are moving in the retrograde direction of single electorates.

Taken all round, the schemes to this end that have been tried, both in Commonwealth and State elections, have proved distinctly disappointing to Labour politicians. In the latest Federal election, and also in that quite recently held in New South Wales, Labour leaders were, without doubt, very confident of obtaining majorities that would put and keep them in power —or at least so expressed themselves to their followers, whose hopes were raised accordingly. In the Federal election these hopes were doomed to complete defeat, while in the Mother State they were only partially realised in the shape of a very shadowy majority, which has been maintained only by the appointment of a renegade Speaker, and which renders their hold on office so precarious as virtually to preclude the pursuit of anything but a very moderate Labour policy. This, of course, does not by any means suit the book of a great proportion of the rank and file of the Labour party, which has grown eager to exercise in legislative and administrative spheres the same arbitrary domination that it is able to display in the industrial field. In this, we fancy, may be found the real root of the dissatisfaction now exhibited with the new methods of election that have of recent years been adopted, and of the determination that, if possible, a reversion should be made to the old system under which Labour’s earliest political victories were obtained. Australian Labour is, of course, not singular in -first lauding an electoral scheme which gives promise of party success, and then damning it because its adoption has been followed by failure. We have not to go outside our own Dominion for a like instance, for here, some twelve years ago, the party in power with a very substantial majority brought into operation, with a great flourish of trumpets, the Second Ballot Act, on'y to find that at the first election under it that majority was very seriously reduced, while at the second the majority was converted into a decided minority. Since then New Zealand Liberals have been clamant in their demands for a system of proportional representation, demands which have also been strongly supported by the Labour party. There is, of course, intended to be in these comments no suggestion of condemnation of the principle of proportional representation, but only an indication that no electoral system will satisfy the party or parties that suffer defeat under it. Though the schemes evolved in Australia may not have answered expectations when brought into practice, still that is not to say that the broad principle is not sound, or that some means of its satisfactory application wi'l riot ultimately be devised. In the meantime, however, our Labour advocates of proportional representation are faced with its complete condemnation by their Australian friends.