SENATE FIGURES ON AUSTRALIAN ELECTION

Wanganui Chronicle, 23 December 1949, Page 5

SENATE FIGURES ON AUSTRALIAN ELECTION

SYDNEY, Yesterday (PA).—Liberal and Country candidates for the Senate so far have received 5 per cent more votes than Labour candidates. The chief Commonwealth Electoral 1 Officer, Mr V. Turner, said Iqst night ' that State figures gave a more ac- > curate picture of party voting than 1 the House of Representatives figures. With 4,636,010 votes counted and i 1 only about 1 per cent of the ballot 11 papers to come in, the percentages are ; ’ as follow:—Liberal and Country 45.9, i Labour 40.9, Communists 1.9, others i) 2.5, informal 8.8. Only in South Aus-| < tralia has Labour recorded a higher i Senate vote than the Liberal-Country 11 Party group. j f The State figures of the Liberal-1 i Country Party and Labour voting are 11 as follow, Labour being mentioned!! last:—New South Wales, 863,674,11 733,682; Victoria, 569,168, 532.002:11 Queensland 318,014, 262,808; Tas-|) mania, 71,784, 65,170; West Australia, ' 133,522, 125,289; South Australia, I: 171,106, 178,035; totals, 2,127,268,1 1,896,986. I 1 Communists received 88.370 votes | and polled best in Victoria, with 3.2 ' per cent of the total. At Canberra the Minister of Health, Sir Earle Page, said the health scheme |- he was developing would eliminate . the form-filling features of the plan I. prepared by the former Minister of ' Health, Senator McKenna, and would ' release the medical profession from 1 obligations and controls that Senator McKenna sought to impose. . It would be administered through friendly so-i cieties and similar organisations. The ' main object would be to ensure free insulin, pencillin and other costly key I drugs, but there would be no unlimited free medicine. He hoped to be able to announce an outline of the new scheme in January.