LABOUR PARTY ROUTED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20669, 15 September 1930, Page 12

LABOUR PARTY ROUTED.

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS. SURPRISE IN VICTORIA. [FROM oun OWN COHHESPONDENT.] MELBOURNE, Sept. 4. -Although the rout of tho Labour Party at tho municipal elections in Victoria created a surprise throughout tho Commonwealth it can hardly be taken as a political guide. Iri the first place tho franchise is confined to ratepayers over 21 years of age, who are allowed up to three votes, according to the value of tho property held. Secondly, tho issues aro vastly different from those which confront electors in the political sphere. All the same, it may bo a straw showing the way tho wind is blowing, but even that is doubtful. It is difficult to discover tho causo of the rout. Of tho 26 endorsed Labour candidates in tho metropolitan sections who were opposed, all but two were defeated. Nine retiring Labour councillors lost their seats. Mr. Ward Ansfpy, a son of the Federal Minister of Public Health, and Mr. J. Keen, secretary of tho Victorian branch ot tho Australian Labour Party, wcro among those who also ran. The president of tho Australian Council of Trado Unions, Mr. W. J. Duggan, was displaced from the Coburg Council and tho Labour candidato for tho Port Melbourne mayoralty—a municipality that has voted Labour ever since the formation of tho Labour Party — was defeated by a progressive party can didate. So it is that distinctly Labour areas will have a council that is not Labour.

Nationalists aro claiming that the voting is an indication of what will happen when the next general election takes place, but moderate thinkers cannot see that the position if affected in (he slightest as a Jesuit of tho municipal voting.