"FARMER DOMINATION"

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 14

"FARMER DOMINATION"

OPPONENTS' COMPLAINT

SUGGESTED ACTION

Opponents to an increased rate of exchange within the Coalition- Party are watching the situation with particular interest, for they believo that the occasion might arise within the next few days when they will be called upon.to declare ,themselves on one side or the other.

If the Government takes a deliberate step in the direction of an artificially high rate of exchange, said one of tho Coalitionists who would oppose such a step, a group of members would probably vote against the Government in order to bring the question before the country. In such a case, the group would not stop at opposing a high rate of exchange; it would go further and openly advocate_the Dominion ridding itself of what is termed the "farmer domination" in Parliament. ■

It is believed that ten members of the Coalition could be persuaded to support such a step, and that if this wag done they would form themselves into a new party. One of the leaders of the group said this morning that the hopelessness of a policy of high exchange required immediate counteraction. Through the system of control which obtained in the Coalition, it was virtually impossible for anyone except a farmer to obtain nomination for Parliament, except in a few city seats. In mixed electorates farmers were always nominated. This was because the party was dominated by farmers, who endeavoured to preserve their ' control of the Dominion by seeing that tho continuity of a rural majority in the House was preserved. The population of the Dominion did not realise that there were moro people in the towns than in the rural areas, and did not recognise the fact that of the three classes—farmers, wage earners, and people with other sources of income—the 'farmers were in a great minority. Yet farmers governed . the country in the interests of that minority.