PARLIAMENTARY NEWS.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 661, 2 August 1876, Page 2

PARLIAMENTARY NEWS.

(From a corespondent of the Press.) The evidence adduced before the Eastern Maori committee was of an extraordinary kind. It became necessary to appoint a deputy-returning officer in one district, but only three persons were eligible, one who could neither read nor write, a second who did not understand Maori, and third the returning officer’s son, who was appointed. The latter’s idea of bis duties were most peculiar.

He considered himself deputy to Mr Henar Potai, the Government candidate, and filled up books which he appeared to think did the duty of the ballot papers, with the name of one candidate only, and up to the last acted on the belief that there were only two, while in fact there were four candidates. Some of these books were circulated in the southern part of the district, and, according to Mr Sheehan’s evidence, on the polling day 300 of these voters were brought down to Masterton in favor of Mr Karitiana and rejected as informal. The committee considered that 250 votes that might have been polled in one part of the district by Mr Potai were more than counterbalanced by the rejected 300 of Mr Karitiana’s; therefore they concluded that no material difference in the candidate’s position could have resulted if things had been regularly conducted, and reported accordingly. Mr Pyke’s Gold Duty Bill proposes to reduce the export duty from January Ist to Is, and from January Ist, 1878, to 3d per ounce. The Lake Ellesmere and Forsyth Reclamation and AkaroaßailwayTrustßill, introduced by Mr Montgomery, comes into operation on December 31st. The trust is to consist of nine members, elected annually, three by the Akaroa and Wainui Road Board, three by the Little River Road Board, and three by the Akaroa Borough Council, on the first Monday in January of each year. The lands vested in the trust are all “within the boundaries of the Akaroa and Wainui Board, and within the boundaries of the Little River Board,” which it has power to lease on mortgage for not exceeding twenty years, and to sell any lands reclaimed from Lake Ellesmere at not less than £2 an acre;