WELLINGTON NEWS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 November 1929, Page 11

WELLINGTON NEWS

MR. W'ILFORD’S SUCCESSOR. FOUR CANDIDATES IN THE FIELD. (Special .Correspondent.) Wellington, Nov. IQ. All the parties in the House of Representatives, with the exception of the Country Party, in which Mr. Rushworth, the member for Bay of Islands, stands alone, are now represented in the contest for the Hutt seat, from which the Hon. T. M. Wilford is retiring in order to take up the High Commissionership. Mr. James Kerr has been selected as the Government candidate, Mr. Harold Johnston as the Reform candidate, Mr. Walter Nash as the. Labour candidate, and Mr. H. D. Bennett as the Independent candidate. Mr. Kerr, the least known of the four candidates, is rhe proprietor and editor of the Hutt and Petone Chronicle, and is not likely to hold the big vote Mr. Wilford has consistently polled. On the face of things it Iboks as if the Government would have been well advised had it left Mr. Nash to win the seat for Labour. Mr. Nash secured 5978.v0tes at the genera 1 ; election last year, and with Mr. Wilford’s 7000 votes released it is not unlikely that a substantial 'number of them will go Labour’s way. THE CANDIDATES. Mr. Kerr has moved well abreast of the politics of the day, and has assisted materially in holding the Hutt seat for Mr. Wilford and his party, but, like many another good journalist, he has not kept himself sufficiently in the public eye to be helped by a rush election. Mr. Harold Johnston, a member of a very old Wellington family,, is in his fifty-four th year without having previously meddled at all prominently with politics, but an early education at Wanganui College and a finishing course at Oxford have left him with the attractive personality of a graduate of these institutions. He is a Reformer, one may suspect, rather by association than by conviction, and by and by he may be found attaching himself to a more virile party. Mr. Bennett meanwhile need not be taken into account. He scarcely can aspire to occupying the positions Mr. Wilkinson and Mr. Polson already occupy in the House. Mr. Nash, ’rom every viewpoint, appears to have a distinct advantage over all his opponents.

THEIR CHRISTMAS BOX. ’ Protests, spoken and printed, still are being made against the “Christmas Box” of fIOO apiece awarded by members of the House of Representatives to themselves at the conclusion of the recent session of Parliament. The most striking of these made' public during the last day or two comes from the New Zealand Educational Institute, which reminds the public that “an application from the headmasters in the primary schools for increases in salary, and endorsed by practically every member of the Legislature, promised some years ago, was refused on tho ground that there were no funds available. The teaching profession, with the Public Service, is concerned with the justice of the restoration of the “cuts.” The Educational Institute feels.very strongly, so it says, that its claim on behalf of the headmasters ought now to receive fresh consideration even if the restoration of the cut is not possible. The Acting-Prime Minister when seen to-day had nothing to say on the matter. MORE CLAIMANTS. The statement made by the Hon, T. K. Sidey, the Attorney-General, in the Legislative Council, to the effect that the bonus to members of the other Chamber might be justified by the costliness of the November - election, has encouraged some of the defeated candidates on that occasion to put forward claims for compensation. They maintain, not illogically, that they expended as much as the successful candidates did, and therefore should be recompensed at least on the same scale. Their expenditure, they urge, was absolutely money out of pocket, which could not be in any way recovered, while the expenditure of the successful candidates was simply an investment from which they receive for thr.ee years a substantial return. Neither the Attorney-General, nor any other member of the Cabinet has yet challenged this contention, and it is difficult to see how it is to be refuted. At the general election all the candidates stood on the same footing with a limitation of expenditure—which, by the way, was frequently disregarded —and it surely was illogical, even unfair, to reimburse the candidates that succeeded and ignore those that failed.