Manawatu Daily Times How The “Country Quota” Operates

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6676, 1 August 1928, Page 6

Manawatu Daily Times How The “Country Quota” Operates

Now that daylight saving is dead and buried the statisticians are busy working out the result of the vote in the House as compared with the electoral representation of that vote in the country. It is interesting to observe that tha thirty-three members of the House who, voted .for the continuance of daylight saving received 25,902 more.votes' at the last general election than did the thirtyeight membets who opposed the measure even after making a generous allowance of 3700 votes, half the number of electors on the roll, for the Hon. K. S. Williams’ uncontested seat. , ,

These, figures-, throw, some light on the question of the “country quota,” which one of these fine days .the electors wall begin to think about. Of the memberk of . the. House who voted or paired on. Mr. Sidey’s Bill thirty-eight opposed, the measure arid thirty-three supported ( it, the seventy-one having, represented between them 348,526 votes at the last general election. This gave an average of 4908 per member, Mr. K. S. Williams again, being given the'number of votes he might have expected to poll had not his personal popularity secured him a “walk over.”

It is significant that of the thirty-eight members who voted against daylight saving only five secured over the average number of votes at the general election of 1925, while the remaining opponents of the measure polled from 4652 by Mr. Lysnar in Gisborne down to 211 by Mr*. Uru in the Southern Maori districts. Of the thirty-three members who supported the measure at the general election only ten .members secured fewer than the average of 4908, one of them touching 4900, while twentythree! polled over five thousand. ’

Thcre_ are only two of the thirty-eight opponents of the Summer Time Bill who polled over six'thpusand votes at the last election, Mr. McLennan,; the member for Franklin, with 6714, as a tribute to Mr. Massey, and the Prime Minister, with 6307, as

a .tribute to himself; but the supporters of the Bill included one member who polled over 8000. votes, Mr. J. S. Dickson, two ' polled between 7000 and 8000, and eleven who polled between 6000 and 7000. 1 ■ * .

The defeat of. the Bill, in fact, was one of the obvious operations of the “country quota,” a privilege conferred upon the rural electors as a temporary concession some forty years ago when polling booths were few and far between in the country districts and when transport facilities, in the back-blocks were confined to the saddle horse and the bullock dray. Many years ago these disadvantages were removed by the construction of roads and bridges and railways, and yet the dead hand of the pastes preserved to make a jest of New. Zealand’s boast of" political equality. - V