THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 17, 1919. A FATUOUS DECISION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17575, 17 March 1919, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 17, 1919. A FATUOUS DECISION.

The decision, at which, the Government has arrived, that there will be no declaration of the results of the poll on the prohibition issue next month, until all the votes have been collected and counted, surely represents the acme of official stupidity. It is a decision which is said to have been adopted on the advice of the Solicitor-general. It is difficult to understand why it should have been thought necessary for the Government to refer to the Crown Law Office at " all such a matter as that of the issue of the results of the poll. It will hardly be suggested that any publication of results on the night of the 10th April, when the figures, though approximately correct, would necessarily be liable to alteration, not only because the votes of absent electors would remain to be counted, but also because returning officers' returns would be subject to modification upon scrutiny, would have the effect of invalidating the poll. If, however, it is alleged that it might have that effect, the Crown Law Office would have no reason to be congratulated upon the discovery that this might be the case. Such, a discovery would involve it, indeed, in discredit, for the provisions of the law, under which the referendum is to be taken, respecting the declaration of the' results of the poll are substantially. the same as those that have governed the declaration of the results of the licensing polls in the past. If there were any grounds in law, therefore, why the results of the polling next month should be withheld untfl some uncertain date in the future when all the.vqtes from members of the Expeditionary Force in different parts of the world, on land and at sea, have been collected and included .with the votes recorded in New Zealand, those same grounds should have precluded the prompt issue to the public of the results of the voting at the polls in the past. But the .fatuity of/the decision of the Government consists in the fact that unless it is proposed to adopt the illegal course of prohibiting the. use of the telegraph, service for the transmission of unofficial records of the results of the voting it is a decision to which effect cannot possibly be given. The Federal Government in Australia, which has developed a capacity for committing blunders that is scarcely inferior to that of the : National Government in New Zealand, never dreamt of any such absurdity, on the occasion of any of the various referenda-in that country, as that now contemplated in this dominion. Ihe results of the referenda on the proposals for the amendment of -the Federal Constitution and of the two: referenda on the conscription proposal were far from complete .when the counting of the votes was suspended on the night of the polling in each case. They were not complete, in fact, until weeks after the various polls had been taken. This did not, however, prevent the Federal Government from letting the results be known for what they were worth—and they invariably showed what the effect of the polling would be—on the nights on which the polls were respectively taken. There was no ridiculous assumption on the part of the Ministers and officials in Australia that it was possible to withhold the results, imperfect though , they might be, from the press and the public. And no ."Ministerial action, short of the prohibition of the use of the telegraph service for the transmission of the returns of the polling, will prevent the prompt publication of the results of the approaching referendum. 1 °