No Party Favoured By Increase of Seats In Federal Parliament

Grey River Argus, 3 September 1948, Page 8

No Party Favoured By Increase of Seats In Federal Parliament

SYDNEY, Sept. 2 Details of the proposed redistribution of seats in the Federal Parlia--ment have been announced by the New South Wales Electoral Distribution Commissioners, who have rearranged boundaries and created new electorates to provide metropolitan constituencies with populations as near as possible to an average of 41,238 and country electorates to an average of 38,628. This is in accordance with the policy of increasing the membership of the House of Representatives from 75 to 123. The increase in each State are: New South Wales, 28 to 47; Victoria. 20 to 33; Queensland, 6 to 10; West Australia, 5 to 8; Tasmania, unchanged at 5; Northern Territory, unchanged at 1; Australian Capital Territory, previously unrepresented, now ’ The members for the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory will vote only on questions affecting their own areas. In New South Wales the metropolitan seats, now 14, will be 25 and the country seats; now 14, will be 22. The first comment suggests that the redistribution offers no sweeping advantage to any party. At present Labour holds 19 New South Wales seats, Lang Labour 1, Liberals 5 and Country Party 3. Observers in Canberra say that .under the new distribution 23 seats would be reasonably safe for Labour and 14 for the Opposition, with 10 swinging seats. The State president of the. Liberal Party, Mr W. H. Spooner, says his party should win 16 to 20 New South Wales seats at the next election.