“POLITICAL EFFRONTRY”

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 33, 1 December 1937, Page 3

“POLITICAL EFFRONTRY”

EXTENDING THE LIFE OF PARLIAMENT. WELLINGTON, Last night. “For sheer political effrontery, I do not think anything could beat the arguments put forward by the Op : position,” said Mr J. A. Lee (Government, Grey Lynn) in the second reading of the debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill. “When the previous Government extended the life of Parliament it knew that it was following a policy for which the people would not vote. It said, in effect, ‘if we are going to do anything unpleasant, let. us have time so that the people may forget.’ The people did not forget. The previous Government changed the rules during the game.

“Preferential voting does not give vou the man whom the largest number of people want,” Mr Lee said, “but only the man whom the least number of people dislike. It is an entirely negative idea. As for proportional representation, I have never been a gTeat believer in that, even in the days when it was a plank in the Labor Party’s platform. It is impossible to reduce humanity to the terms of a mathematical equation.”