ISLAND REPRESENTATION.

Wairarapa Age, 9 August 1926, Page 4

ISLAND REPRESENTATION.

A suggestion South Bland members of Parliament intend to press upon the Government with regard to the distribution of representation between the North and South Islands is open to very definite objections. The proposal of these members is that the South Island, irrespective of changes in population, should retain the thirty Parliamentary seats of which it is now possessed, and that the North Island should receive as many additional seats as its increasing population may entitle it to. The obvious objections to this course are that it would put the country to needless expense, and saddle it with an unwieldly Parliament merely in order to deal tenderly with the more or less fanciful susceptibilities of the South Island. If we are to increase the numerical strength of the House of Representatives in accordance with the extent to which the population growth of the North Island outstrips that of the South Island, we must be prepared in no very long time to rebuild the Parliamentary Buildings, and to accept a corresponding increase in the costs of representative government generally. There is not the slightest reason for incurring these added costs. Our Parliament, as matters stand, has more members than the Australian Federal Parliament, and there is no obvious reason why the number of members shbuld ever be increased. It is contended in the South Island that its electorates are becoming too big for candidates to cover at election time, but in these days of improving communications, and with facilities for radio broadcasting developing apace, any serious ground for complaint on this score should tend progressively tc disappear.