A DISCREDITED ELECTORAL SYSTEM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 739, 22 June 1923, Page 4

A DISCREDITED ELECTORAL SYSTEM.

It must bo rather disconcerting to the Leader of the Liberal Opposition who has been waving the proportional representation flag pretty vigorously of late, to find that such a well-informed journal as the Now Zealand limes has, after carefully examining the position and tho results achieved under the proportional representation system, arrived at the conclusion that it has nothing to recommend it as a substitute for tho so-called “first-past-the-post” system which is in operation in this country. Proportional representation, as we have remarked on more than one occasion has very little to recommend it to tho electors of New Zealand, though it has a strong appeal to those who desire to ■introduce and perpetuate machine politics in the government of the country. It can only he applied outside of the cities to largo electorates of an altogether unwieldy character, with a consequent loss of intimate knowledge a member of Parliament should have ol his constituents and constituency. In theory, and on paper, its “mathematical exactitude” in apportioning seats iii accordance with the number of votes polled for each party appears, at first sight, to bo all that could bo desired, and, so far as the representation of parties is concerned, no great fault can bo found with it, except that it fails_ to ensure either majority rule or to give minorities tho representation its advocates claim it does. It really produces no better result than is possible of attainment under the system of representation in vogue for so many years in this country and in Great Britain, Canada and certain of the Australian States. Majority rule becomes impossible under its operation and party rule also goes by the board. 3et the party system has (as the New Zealand Times pointed out tho other day) worked whatever constitutional improvements have been made in constitutional government by democracies. To adopt proportional representation would bo to abandon partv government. We do not gather that Mr Wilford is at all anxious to do that and if he is not, it follows that he cannot have fathomed the true working of the proportional representation system. He has, apparently, merely adopted the idea as part of his policy because, in certain quarters, it has become the catch cry calculated to damage the opponents of those who advocate its adoption, with no real knowledge of whither it leads. ' Tho Christchurch experience is certainly unsatisfactory and, if its working can bo regarded as likely to be successful anywhere, it surely ought to be satisfactory in a district covering some half-dozen Parliamentary electorates, polled for municipal purposes as one constituency. There is, however, very considerable dissatisfac* lion with its working in Christchurch, and while the member for Lyttelton acclaims it as a complete success, others denv that it is any improvement on the old system. It is certainly more cumbrous and capable of _ producing weird results, and it lends itself to a very undesirable manipulation of votes in the distribution of second and later preferences. Both in New South M ales and in Tasmania, where proportional representation is in force at Parliamentary elections, it has proved even more unsatisfactory than in Christchurch. In the former State both the Nationalists and the Labour Party want to get rid of it, but the so-called “Progressives”— the least influential of the political parties in New South Wales—favour its retention, and as their support is essential to tho Government, which, without it would be in a minority, no move is likely to be made for its repeal and tho reversion to what is, after all, the fairest of any electoral system yet devised, under which the candidate who heads the poll at an election secures the seat. It is pretty evident from the working of the system in Now South Wales that it practically enables a minority to dominate the majority, thus establishing minority rule.