SUBURBAN MAYORALTIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20866, 7 May 1931, Page 8

SUBURBAN MAYORALTIES.

A feature of the municipal elections in the Auckland suburban area, so striking as to force itself on attention, has been the defeat of retiring Mayors, or in one or two instances where the former holder of the office was not seeking election again, of candidates representing the policy of the retiring Mayor. Mount Eden and Mount Albert arc the most striking of these events. The positions in tho different boroughs tend to differ, so it is not easy to draw clean-cut. conclusions from this similarity of results. The nearest approach to a common deduction is that in several cases the successful candidates emphasised the need for economy, suggesting that in expenditure, especially perhaps capital expenditure, room had been left by the former regime for the exercise of this virtue. So far as this is reasonably applicable, it is a healthy sign. Without inquiring too closely into the merits of capital expenditure on local body works in recent years, it can be said definitely that much of it was embarked upon with an apathetic electorate not carinc greatly whether loans were raised or not. The size of the vote at loan [ poll after loan poll has proved this beyond question. Authorisations have been approved by only a small proportion of those entitled to vote in far too many instances. If tho success of candidates who have concentrated on finance in their campaigns indicates the awakening of greater vigilance, it is a very good sign. The assumption that it is so must be tentative, bearing in mind that the electorate is different in the two cases ; but allowing for the reservation, any evidence of a keener interest by citizens in municipal finance is to be welcomed. For the rest, there has been noticeable in national politics, in New Zealand and elsewhere, a general tendency to seek changes, to put new men in and to dismiss parties and candidates who have long held the field. Since the wider electorates are only greater aggregations of the same kind of individuals as those who vote in municipalities, something of the same feeling must have caused the remarkably general impulse to trynew men in the various mayoral chairs.