THE PARTIES AT OAMARU.

Southland Times, Issue 18928, 30 April 1923, Page 4

THE PARTIES AT OAMARU.

To neutral observers the Oam aru contest is filled with amusing things, with joyful revelations of the party game and “politricke.” At Oamaru the parties are hard at work, and both are using all the ingenuity they can command to turn the trick. Mr Massey swoops down with an expanding surplus and, imitating predecessors he has condemned, beams on the electorate with a benevolent and generous eye, adopting a pose suspiciously like that which some parents find useful shortly before Christmas, when little Johnny is told that if he is good Santa Claus will surely leave a tram or a nice red post office in his stocking. The Liberal Party, having decided that there is little hope of improving Mr Macpherson’s chances by the personal intervention of the leaders, upraises to the heavens a cry that each candidate should fight his own battle, and that others should not intrude. And then, as Mr Lee secured the new election on an appeal to the Courts, much use is made of the fact that he did not take his “licking like a sport.” Mr Macpherson, from his platform, brightly charges his opponent, the returning officer, and a few others with fraud, and suggests, too, that the Supreme Court is either foolish or not honest. If the first election did not return Mr Macpherson lawfully, he has no complaint—he should welcome a clear decision one way or the other. Instead of welcoming it, he attacks the Court and the character of his opponent. Of course, if the early count had gone the other way, Mr Macpherson would probably have appealed and Mr Lee would have bewailed the lack of “sportsmanship” in his opponent. It is all part of the game and the poor electors have no means of saying “a plague on both your houses.” The contest is not being fought on political issues at all. The Prime Minister talks in a hazy way about dissolution if Mr Lee is beaten and the Liberals reply by saying that he said a dissolution had been avoided by the Tauranga election. Mr Macpherson makes some charges against the Government and when the Prime Minister says that the matters involved have been satisfactorily explained, gazes knowingly at his audience and repeats his allegations. It is all very amusing, but it is not edifying, and the Oamaru contest, whichever way it goes, will not reflect much credit on either side.