The Sun THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1914. "PROPORTIONAL" ARITHMETIC.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 263, 10 December 1914, Page 6

The Sun THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1914. "PROPORTIONAL" ARITHMETIC.

On slack, days the newspaper advocates of proportional representation delight in working out complicated arithmetical exercises to demonstrate the precise number of seats the respective parties would have obtained,in 1911 had the election been conducted on the proportional system. These little sums, either by accident or design, always produce a result on paper that would have been eminently satisfactory to the Liberals and decidedly discomfiting to the Reformers. The mathematical results are a tribute to the ingenuity of the proportionalists, but their conclusiveness leaves something to be desired. Not to put too fine a point on it, the whole thing is sheer humbug. The calculations ar.e worthless and utterly untrustworthy. In the nature of things it is quite impossible that they can convey an accurate idea of what would have happened if proportional representation had been in vogue in 1911, and the proportionalists know it. Still they persist in tallying up their own particular allocation of the votes cast for the respective candidates, and assume, without any warrant whatever, that the electors would have voted in the same way under proportional representation as they did under the second ballot system. Under proportional representation the electorates would have been grouped, each returning a certain number of members, and the respective parties would have run official ' 1 tickets,'' instead of individual members, with the result that they would have polled their full strength in each electoral area. This in all probability would have proved as disastrous to the Liberals in 1911 as the Liberal newspapers say it would have been to the Eeformers, because in 1911 the Liberals were on the down grade, and subsequent by-elections saw them at the bottom of the poll as the result of being squeezed to death between the Reformers and the Labourites. The truth is that the electors are seriously in danger of being fooled by the cry of proportional representation. It commends itself to one particular party, because that party anticipates satisfactory .results from a party standpoint if it adopted. The really important question of whether it will produce stable government by the best men in the interests of all the people, is a matter to which the proportionalists devote singularly little attention. Nor do they show any inclination to be guided by results. An ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory, and it is merely necessary to look at Tasmania to see that there is nothing f whatever in proportional representation to warrant any sanguine expectations being formed regarding it.. The party game goes on there just the same as it does here, with a few added complications, and Tasmanian politicians are no better nor any worse on the average than ours. All political contests boil down to the single issue of who-shall, rule? Eeid or Deakin? Fisher or Cook? Massey oxWard? If a particular method of election looks as if it would favour one faction, that crowd immediately see superlative merits in it, while their opponents view it with undisguised suspicion. And if Fisher is to rule, it is a matter, of secondary importance whether' his parliamentary majority is large or small. Cook must stay out till he can get a majority, the size of which lias no bearing on his capacity for public administration. Seddon was in power thirteen years, and had majorities ranging from 50 to 60 for most of the period. He got them on the first-past-the-post system, and it would have made no difference to his legislation or to the character of his administration had those majorities been cut down to 10 or 20 by some other system of election. Proportional representation is merely a complicated way of deciding which the ruling party shall be, without making any appreciable difference to the quality and character of public administration, because it cannot affect the. qualifications of the party leaders.