THE WAIPAWA BY-ELECTION

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 43, 14 November 1940, Page 8

THE WAIPAWA BY-ELECTION

A by-election for the Waipawa seat will be held on Saturday, and the one point on which most people are agreed, whether they are electors or not, is that there never should have been a by-election. Ihe responsibility for this rests upon the Government. The leaders of the National Party, as the vacancy for Auckland West showed, preferred to follow the British example and for the war period allow the party previously holding a seat to nominate a hew member should a vacancy occur. That would have been a fitting course to follow in the case of Waipawa. By a substantial majority the electorate two years ago returned Mr. Jull, a strong supporter of the National Party, and the electors expect to exercise their choice again in a year s time, so that the unopposed return of a National nominee to represent the constituency for the balance of the term would have been in keeping with the spirit of the times. With the present large Ministerial majority in Parliament the retention of the seat by the National Party could not have affected in the slightest the power of the Government to give effect to its policy; but the avoidance of an election contest would on the other hand have assisted to further that spirit of unity among all parties in the national war effort which the Government itself is constantly advocating. A contest having been thus forced by the Labour I arty, it became the duty of the National nominee, Mr. C. G. E. Harker, to state the issue plainly, and he has done so. It is whether Waipawa should return one who would constantly urge the Government, by criticism and co-operation, to press on more energetically with the war effort, or one who, as a bound and fettered nominee of the Socialist machine, would be content to endorse and applaud whatever might be done or left undone. The need at the present time is for constructive criticism on all matters dealing with the war. . Even where the party system has been temporarily abandoned, as in Britain, the help to be derived from sound constructive criticism cannot be questioned. It has been freely admitted by members of the British non-party Government. Mr. Harker has stressed the need for ever greater war effort and feels that an earnest critic can, at such a time as this, be more useful to the country and the constituency than a member whose vote would be pledged before he even took his scat. That is the broader ground of the appeal made by the National candidate, but it was inevitable that other issues should come up for discussion. Waipawa is largely a farming district, and its progressive centres draw their strength from the primary industries. It is, then, their mutual concern that legislation to be brought down when Parliament reassembles will vitally affect the men on the land. If the Smail Farms Amendment Bill reaches the Statute Book in its present then no man now in possession of a farm will feel secuie. The Bil will give the Government power to take any land it likes and farm it to any extent it likes. Ihe old provision that enabled a man, whose property was taken for subdivision purposes, to retain a certain area for his own use, is to be discarded. Moreover, the owner’s right to have the value fixed by an independent Judge of the Supreme Court, with assessors, is also to be set aside. These are only some of the drastic changes proposed, and it is by no means certain that the Bill, although allegedly’ a preparatory step towards the settlement of discharged soldiers, will be used for that purpose. On the contraryit is rather a further evidence of intention to press on with the Socialist policy oi State farming openly advocated by the Minister of Lands. Even the returned soldiers, for whose benefit the measure is professedly designed, are not to be permitted to obtain the freehold of their holdings but must join the great army of State dependants and tenants being cieatcd as part of the Socialist encroachment on individual enterprise. It is within the power of the electors of Waipawa to prove Lu the Government, and to the people of the Dominion as a whole, that, at such a time, there need not and should not have beet) a costly byelection with its inevitable widening of sectional diflcreuces. Such a decision might impress on the Socialists who dominate the Government the fact that there are issues that tower far above the domestic issues of party politics. If the people of Waipawa do that they will have done the Dominion a real service.