MR. HOLLAND'S OBSERVATIONS

Chronicle (Levin), 9 December 1946, Page 7

MR. HOLLAND'S OBSERVATIONS

Prcss Association

SOME INTERESTING SITUATIONS FORECAST

By Telegraph —

CHiflSTOlIUECH, Dec. 9. "Now that the iinal figures have beeu announced it is possibie to make a survey of ,the preseut situation iu the light of those figures," stated Mr. S. G. Holland tonight. " It is not my purpose, iu making this revievv, to draw unreasona!)le deductions. Rather do I wish to place before the public some observations based on the actual results of the general election. ' ' The new Parliament will comprise 42 Labour members and 38 National members, so that after appointing a Speak'er, the differenee in the voting strength in the House will be three } votes and the differenee when in comj mittee stages will be only two votes. "This should make for some extrar j ordinarily interesting situations when j the House meets again as the last OpI position gained quite a reputation for i itself as a team which occupied its seats during sittings and on many occasions we were ahle to poll our full strength, ' ' On quite a number of divisions the Government had a majority of only one or two and on one occasion at least had to fall back on the chairman's casting vote. That was when there was a differenee of 11 in the voting strength instead of three as there will be in the new Parliament. "The fffSff'fafet that/1Sihhrgdh';i§ that, notwithstanding the Prime Minister's forecast of a sweeping Labour victory, j it is the National Party which has made | the .progress and its progress is all the j5fnorb reinarkable in view of the fact i Jthat- alteratidns to the electoral houn- | dkries -cost us at the very least three Seats.- -Yet we have won 38 seats compared ^ with the 24 we had in 1938 and 34 seats we won at the 1943 election. 1 ' Another 40 votes in Raglan and 140 votes in Roskill would have put the Government out of office. It is that slender margin of 180 votes which keeps

the present Government in office today. ' ' The second fact which bears on the situation is that, apart from the four Maori ele'ctorates, the National Party and Labour Party each won 38 of the other 76 seats so that the Labour Party cannot by any stretch of imagination claim that it has received a mandate from the electors in those 76 European electorates, to continpe with its programme of ultimate soeialism. ■ . '-The Government occugies the Treasury benches hy virtue of the fact that it won all four Maori seats ' and the Maori elections were decided on the question of social security and nothing else. ' .

"The third- fact is that the Maori elections are conducted without any Maori rolls and with no practieal method of checking plural voting of halfcast Maoris voting in both the Maori election and European election on the following day. I make no charges whatever of plural voting because I have not concrete evidence before me but I do say most emphatically that it is entirely wrong that the pre-, sent loose method of conducting the Maori elections should continue. It was a plapk in our election policy that Maori election rolls would be prepared for all f uture elections and we will employ every method at our disposal to have the present unsatisfactory position rectified before the next election. "Another matter which calls for earnest consiaeration is that one Maori member sits in Parliament with considerably less than 1000 votes while a pakeha member receives 10,000 votes and many other members receive 8000 and 9000. This can hardly be called one vote one value. It is somewhat ironical that all four Maori members voted to alter the electoral boundaries for everyone except themselves. "It seems to me that if we are to have eqjuality as between Maori aud pakeha then it should be real equality aud not just something that suits certain sections. ' ' The f ourth fact of interest is the great increase in the vote recorded by National Party candidates. fciubject to adjustments when the linal totals are .announced, it appears that the National Party vote has passed the 500,000 inark which is an increase of 100,000 over the 1943 .total. I feel quite confident in saying that had the boundaries not been altered a new Government would be in process of being iustalled at this very moment. "Oue other comment I wish to make is in regard to the report of a speech delivered last Priday in Christchurch by the Prime Minister, when he is reported as saying that after the next three years he was confident that the Opposition would be wiped out of existence. Bearing in mind the burnt ballot papers of the 1943 -elections and the boundary alterations for the 194(j elections, one naturally wonders what device or methods Mr. Fraser has in his mind to vvipe out of existcnce in three years, a party representing half a million votes and which. won the same number of European seats in this election as the Labour Party avoh. Experience iu the past has shown." a distinct ten■thehfey'. ta re'Sort t6 " Government " by Order-in-Council ot ,by regulation when party strengths are fai'rly equal iu Parliament. This is a tendency we will resist very strongly if it is resorted to. If proposals cannot pass the democratically elected representatives of the people then they have no right to be in operation at all. "The National Pg,rty's organisation is in great heart. At our Dominion executive meeting in Wellington last week reports from every centre expressed strong determination to continue the fight until ultimate victory is won. As a matter of fact we have already commenced our- preparations to cover the next three years.

"While it was hoped that we would have received those few hundred votes which would have meaut complete victory we have received great encouragement from our greatly increased vote and from our increased strength and the public can be assured that with our increased nunibers we will be able to make our presence felt in the House and we will do our best to advocate those principles for which half a million New Zealanders voted a forttiight ago. "As soon as we have had a little respite following a very strenuous campaign, we will meet to set up working committees aud to complete our plans for next year. In the last three elections our progress has been steady and considerable and today the differenee between the party strengths is so ^mall that even the slightest improvement next time must put us on the Treasury benches."