WOMEN IN THE HOUSE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 510, 13 November 1928, Page 9

WOMEN IN THE HOUSE

MRS. MAGUIRE’S PLANS GLORYING IN CRUSADE Women, who kept their homes going on small allowances, who trained their husbands in the way they should go, who made up more than one-half of the population of New Zealand, and who had proved themselves capable helpmates to man; surely these should have representation in the House of Representatives, This was a basis of the arguments of Mrs. Maguire, Reform candidate for Auckland East, who received a good hearing and a vote of confidence from several hundred electors in St. Andrew’s Hail last evening, Mr. H. P. Burton presiding. Women in this country, she thought, had been rather spoilt; they had not had to fight for the vote or to go to gaol for it. Many of them did not bother to use their votes. Both men and women were needed in a government of a progressive country and she was in the forefront of a movement which had found its feet in England, “I don’t believe in women neglecting their homes to take up politics,” she said. “But times are easier for women now and they have more leisure.”

As a budget keeper in her own house a woman could make Mr. Downie Stewart look silly. The House was, after all, only a big, national hcmsekeeping. Mrs. Maguire said that the Government was progressing on sound lines and this was no time to change it.

A Voice: Do you think 9s a day is enough for a worker?

Mrs. Maguire: That is an'emergency matter. A lot of you would think it fine to get 9s or 12s a day; it is the little work that worries you. “I’m a fighter and I glory in the crusade for women’s rights,” she' declared. “It isn’t me that matters; it is not a personal matter; it is a national affair.”

Defending the Reform policy, she said that it had come through a period of depression and had established sound finances. There were more men on the land than ever before and there were 106 more holdings. A Voice: Gum-diggers.

She advocated the bringing in to the country of men from the yeomen classes of England who had been brought up on the land and would go to it here. She was in favour of bare majority and a two-issue hallo* on the licensing question. Compensation should be given to the brewery workers if prohibition was carried.