LOCAL BODY ELECTIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 12

LOCAL BODY ELECTIONS

The introduction of national political factions into local government is undesirable on many counts. Yet that is what the Labour Party has already partially succeeded in doing, and intends to do much more completely at the forthcoming municipal elections. The scope of Labour's effort is clearly indicated by the number of local bodies for which the Representation Committee has been electing or endorsing candidates. Why communities like Takapuna or One Tree Hill should have to bring their candidates to a large meeting at the Town Hall for endorsement is not at all clear. Few of the 230 delegates representing 25,000 people would have any grasp of the local problems and requirements of particular districts. Labour policies and programmes, moreover, have very little local application. The essence of municipal government is that it should be local, and it is wrong ,to introduce larger divisions into it. The people of Glen Eden or Onehunga should be allowed to manage their own affairs and not have to submit to the judgments of large outside bodies more interested in political philosophies than in drains and footpaths. The elections should mean no more than the choosing by the people concerned of a group of men and women considered best fitted to manage local services. They should be representative of the whole community, not merely of a class within it, and representative also of the local viewpoint and not of a political faction. The Labour Party has chosen, however, to thrust the national wedge into all these local affairs, regardless of the divisive effect on community spirit and effort. It is for the majority who resent this intrusion to organise so that it may be repulsed at the polls.