REPRESENTATION AND POPULATION.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1128, 16 May 1911, Page 8

REPRESENTATION AND POPULATION.

9 VIEWS OF MESSES. FOWLDS AND' ALLEN. (By Telegraph.—Special Correspondent.! Auckland, May 15. The revision of the electoral boundaries which will be made as soon as tho results of the census have keen ascertained was discussed by the Hon. U. Fowkis in an interview. Commenting on the proposal made by ono of ths South Island journals that a new system of allotting the 7G members of tho House of Kopresentatives suould bo devised, he said that tliero was not the slightest doubt that tho present law would lie given effect to with tho result that in consequence of the taking of tho recent census the North Island would certainly bo given two, and possibly three, additional members, while the representation given to the South Island would be correspondingly reduced.

"Personally," said the Minister, "1 am of opinion that the proposal to increase the representation with tlio growth of population in tho Dominion as a whole might be worthy of consideration, but if it was decided to adopt such a scheme it would mean a very larw increas? in the number of members to give the required representation ol the I> urlii. Yi uaiever is done population must be the basis of representation, and with the population increasing here as it is at present the North Island must benefit proportionately. The position now is that the North Island holds tho balance of power, and whatever is done the position must remain the same."

Mr. .Tames Allen, member for Bruce, is of opinion that not more than two electoral districts in the South Island will bo wiped out by the representation commissioners. In conversation with a reporter he remarked that the estimate that the North Island would gain four members had been based on the assumption that the quota of each district would bo the same as in IMG, when it was approximately 13,000. Actually it would be fully 15,009 judging from the returns of tho census that had been completed, and if that estimate was correct it was apparent that the possibility that the six city electorates of Auckland would he divided into seven was rather remote. Another fact that had not been mentioned in tho discussion was that at the previous adjustments tho North Island was given "half a member" more than.it was entitled to, and when the districts were revised the South Island would claim that debt. Tho suggestion that the Bruce electorate would be extinguished was not regarded very seriously by Mr. Allen. He expected rather that the boundaries would be extended, but he thought it was very unlikely that Bruce ant! Wallace, the names of the oldest electorates in Otago. would not be preserved. Mr. Allen added that an effect of the reduction in the number of the southern constituencies was that the districts were becoming unwieldy and some device would have to be adopted to restrict their size to reasonable dimensions.