RECORD NOMINATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25306, 17 August 1943, Page 2

RECORD NOMINATIONS

AUSTRALIAN ELECTION POLLING ON SATURDAY Four hundred and sixteen candidates, a record number, are contesting the 94 vacant seats in the Australian Commonwealth Parliament at the second war-time Federal elections, to be held on Saturday next. There are 346 candidates for the 75 seats of the House of Representatives and 70 for the 19 Senate vacancies. When Parliament was dissolved, the state of the parties in the House of Representatives was: — Labour ■ • •■•••• 36 United Australia Party-United Country Party Opposition .. 36 Independents 2 Total 74 The seventy-fifth seat in the House of Representatives is Northern Territory, which returns a member who has a voice in debate but no vote. Labour governed with the support othe two Independents, Mr A. Wilson representing the rural constituency of Wimmera (Victoria), who was ejected on a wheatgrowers’ vote, and Mr A. W. Coles, managing director of one of the two largest chain store organisations in Australia, who was elected to the Conservative constituency of Henty (Victoria) on a U.A.P. vote. Tliis enabled it to provide a Speaker and to retain a majority of one on the floor of the House. To secure a clear majority, therefore, labour will need to win at least two additional seats. Mr A W. Fadden, a Country Party member, is the leader of the United Opposition, although he is not the leader of the largest Opposition party The U A.P had 24 seats in the last Parliament, and the Country Party 12. Mr Fadden became Prime Minister after the fall of Mr R. G. Menzies, and carried his leadership into Opposition as the Leader of the United Opposition parties. The Senate The state of the parties in the Senate (36 members) was:— Labour •••••: 17 United Australia Party-United Country Party Opposition .. 19 Total .. ■ • 36 Of the 19 Senate seats now vacant, 14 were previously held by Labour. Labour thus faces the electors with only three members remaining in the Senate, and will therefore have to win 16 of the 19 seats to obtain a majority. Intense public interest in war policy and post-war readjustment has brought an outcrop of new political parties, and is making the campaign the most lively and strenuously contested in Federal history. Including "the three major parties—Australian Labour, United Australia, and United Country—2s separate organisations have put candidates in the field. In addition, 107 'lndependents—another record —are standing. ... . Fewer than half the 416 candidates are nominees of the Government and Opposition parties. Labour has endorsed 95 candidates, and the two United Opposition parties 104. Independents, Communist Party candidates, and candidates of newly-formed parties not now represented In Parliament total 217. The Communist Party has nominated 17 candidates and is contesting rural as well as metropolitan constituencies. One of the party’s nominees is a soldier of the present war, Lieutenant E. A. H. Laune, who is contesting Kooyong, the Victorian electorate of Mr R. G. Menzies, ex-Prime Minister. ~ .... . For the most part, the candidates of newly-formed parties are concentrating on New South Wales and Victorian seats. The two most influential and closelyorganised of these parties,are the Liberal Democratic Party and the One Parliament for Australia Party. Broadly, the policy of the Liberal Democratic Party seems to be a liberal interpretation of the traditional policy of the U.A.P., with special emphasis on the need for a National Government. Where possible, the party has nominated returned soldiers of this or the last war. The One Parliament for Australia Party, founded by Mr A. W. Anderson, a wealthy sausage manufacturer, is frankly and almost entirely a unificationist party, and is campaigning for the elimination of State Parliaments and the transfer of sovereign power to the Commonwealth. In Victoria two of the new parties claim to be exclusively devoted to the Interests of servicemen. There are the Service Party and the Services and Citizens’ Party. Women Candidates

Policies of other newly-formed parties are as various as their titles for example, the Middle Class Organisation, the Liberal Party, the Christian Party, the Monetary Reform Party, the Progressive Party, the Australia Womens Party, and the Women for Canberra Movement. , , , . A feature of the election Is the record number of women candidates, 20 of whom have been nominated in four States. The greatest number is eleven—nine for the House of Representatives and two for the Senate—in Victoria. ’ln New South Wales there are six, in Western Australia two, and in Tasmania one. ’ The Tasmanian woman candidate is Dame Enid Lyons, widow of the pre-war Prime Minister, Mr J- A. Lyons. Up to the present no woman has succeeded in being elected to the Federal Parliament in Australia. , ... In all, there are only six seats in which there is a straight-out contest between two candidates. In view of the large number of electorates in which three or more candidates are standing, some time may elapse before the result is known, owing to the Australian system of preferential voting, except, of course, in cases where the candidate with the highest number of No. 1 votes receives a clear majority over all other candidates. Much will therefore depend on the allocation of preferences.