NEW ELECTORATES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19139, 7 October 1936, Page 4

NEW ELECTORATES

READJUSTMENT PROCESS BASED ON BAST CENSUS FLOW OF POPULATION (Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. When the official and detailed figures of the lust population census are available from the Government Statistician, a statutory process operates automatically under which Ihe boundaries of (lie 76 European constituencies of the Dominion are readjusted in lino with the distribution of the pieople. With the flow of population to tho North Island, experience of several readjustments has been a reduction in the. number of South Island seats and a corresponding increase in the North. This is expected with the coming readjustment. The South Island to-day has 29 members and the North Island 47.

Boundary revision cannot bo set in motion until the Government Statistician is in a position to provide the commission with population details much more minute in respect to areas than the information already published from district enumerators. The whole Dominion, for this purpose, is divided into small sections much smaller than the boundaries of the hundreds of local authorities, so that the commissioners when finally allocating quotas of electors to give fairly equal representation in Parliament for each thousand voters, may take groups even of a thousand, moving them from one electorate into the boundaries of another which may have to be enlarged. For this reason the process of readjustment may not commence for a month or so, but the Electoral Act requires the statistician to report these details as early as possible, and following this, the Representation Commission must make its re-allocation of electorates within three months. COMMISSION MEMBERS

The Representation Commission comprises the Surveyor-General and the commissioners of Crown lands for Taranaki and Auckland, with two unofficial members appointed by the Government, to act as North Island commissioners, while the South Island Commission will be the commissioners of Crown lands for Westland, Canterbury and Otago, together with Iwo others who will shortly be appointed by the Government.

Both North and South Island commissions act jointly in tho important preliminary stage, when they have to take a general survey of the population results and allocate the figures in the separate categories of urban and rural. The residents of 64 towns and cities and those living within four miles of the chief post offices of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin come into the urban figures, the remainder being rural population with an electoral advantage of the addition of 28 per cent to their numbers. This country quota has been criticised, but the new Government, though being inclined to readily make innovations, has made no change in the system, and therefore the country quota will again operate automatically. In the previous readjustment of electoral boundaries the commission calculated that the North Island had a population of 831,813, but the country quota enlargement raised the. total to 929,388, representing 97,575 nominal electors. The South Island actual total of 512,656 was increased by 64,240 to 576,896.

The commission in fixing new boundaries is directed by Statute to have regard to community of interest, facilities if communication and topographical features, and its proposals are announced tentatively in advance in order to receive objections before the final revision is gazetted.