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ELECTORAL REFORM.

It will be only cold comfort to the Con-servative-Liberal Party in Australia to be told by the Reform organ in Wellington that but for the turnover of some eleven hundred votes in five conat the iTS be in posseoaijM ■■

benches in the Federal Parliament. Nearly every general olection present ) curiosities of this kind. At tho last general election here, for instance, the majorities of Sir Walter Buchanan, the Hon F. M. B. Fisher, Dr Newman, Mr D. Buick and Mr F. H. Smith put together amounted to no more than three hundred and thirty-three vobos, and it ono hundred and seventy of these votes had been cast tho other way in the required proportions the Reform Party would have been deprived of tho assistance of theso five gentlemen and Mr Massey never would have achieved the prominenco ho now enjoys. Our present system of olection is such a clumsy, haphazard thing that the largest national consequonces may hang on tho smallest happenings at tho ballot box. But there are lessons to be drawn from tho Federal election which ought not to be ignored by the psoplo of this country. The Melbourne “ Argus,” which had not a word to say against the system by which tho Senato is elected when it was embodied in tho Commonwealth Constitution, is now denouncing it as tho cause of all the country’s troubles. It regrets that the Fusion Party returned a single member to tho Senate. Rather than soo it elect only five members in an Assembly oi* thirty-six it would have had it with none at all. “ Then,” it says, “ a very striking object lesson would have been presented to tho pooplo of the monstrous injustice and the utter folly of our present method of electing Senar tors.” The monstrous injustice and the utter folly ought to be obvious enough even with five Fusionists in the Senato. At the recent elections, in rough figures, 1,030,000 electors voted for Labour candidates, 930,000 for Fusion candidates, and 5000 for Independent candidates. Under a system of proportional representation—again, of course, using rough figures—their votes would have returned nineteen Labour members and seventeen fusion members, which would have represented as nearly as possible the strength of the two parties in the constituencies. But in condemning the system under which Australia elects the Second Chamber of its Legislature it is only fair to remember that it rests upon exactly the same principle as does tho system New Zealand employs in the election of its representative Chamber. Just as great an injustice is being suffered by the Liberals in the constituencies represented by Sir Walter Buchanan and the other gentlemeh we have mentioned as is being suffered by the Fhsionists secluded from representation in the Commonwealth Sonato. Some years ago we had three-member constituencies in this country, which were every bit as much opposed to the true principles of representation as are the six-member constituencies in Australia. The onemember constituencies are not so flagrantly unfair, because an injustice in one constituency is often balanced by the injustice in another and the law of chances may operate with some kind of equity so far as majorities -are concerned. But it is conceivable that the Commonwealth elections would have resulted just as they did even if the country had been divided into thirty-six constituencies instead of into six. The “ Dominion,” in reviewing the position, says the confused result of the elections “ iB one of those inexplicable things so often witnessed in .political contests.' But the plain explanation lies in the fact that the Commonwealth, with all its progressive sentiment, has shown itself no more enterprising than New Zealand has in dealing with the alLimportant problem of electoral reform.

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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/LT19140926.2.34

Bibliographic details

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16666, 26 September 1914, Page 8

Word Count
618

ELECTORAL REFORM. Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16666, 26 September 1914, Page 8

ELECTORAL REFORM. Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16666, 26 September 1914, Page 8

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