AUSTRALIAN POLITICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19916, 9 April 1928, Page 10

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS.

NEW SOUTH WALES SEATS. BY-ELECTION CAMPAIGNS. [from our own correspondent.]' SYDNEY, March 22. Some of the newspapers professed to see in the Wollondilly by-election, to fill the vacancy caused by the retirement from Parliament of Sir George Fuller, the new Agent-General, a test of confidence in the State Government. It was nothing of the 6oit, since the victory of the Nationalist, Mr. Morton, an old Parliamentarian, was a foregone conclusion. What it was chiefly remarkable for was the fact that it was the first by-election in New South Wales since the passage of the Casual Vacancies Act of 1920. That measure was a standing political joke. It eliminated an appeal to the electors and substituted for it the nomination and formal election to Parliament of candidates who were next in order of party precedence to those at the general election who were successful. Jones, for example, topped the poll in some electorate or other. He' had only to die or to fall into some other snug job while in Parliament, and Brown,-who was the next candidate of the same political stable, in order of precedence, automatically filled his shoes. The electors, in short, and in such circumstances, were cheated of tho right to choose their -Parliamentary representatives. ■ Now, at by-elections, as is the case, at general elections, men have to fight their way into Parliament, through the ballot box. It is as a result of the new Electoral Act* and of the abandonment of the old multiple-seat electorates, in favour of the present system of electorate.3 represented by a single member, that the anomaly of nominating members to the popular elective chamber has been swept aside. Labour threw the-whole of its,forces, but 5n vain, into the Wollondilly fight, in an effort to steal a march on the Nationalists, and in the belief that the supporters of the latter would be apathetic in a Government stronghold.