THE NEW ELECTORAL DIVISIONS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 159, 23 July 1937, Page 4

THE NEW ELECTORAL DIVISIONS.

As soon as the figures of the census taken in Miarch of last year were made known it was seen that there would need to be some numerical readjustment made with regard to the parliamentary representations of the North and South Islands of the Dominion, there being a very considerable change in the ratios of population since the last previous distribution of seats was made on the census of 1926. At that time (exclusive of Maoris) the population of the North Island was 831,813 and of the South Island 512,656. On this basis, of the 76 European seats 47 were alloted to the North Island and 29 to the South, this meaning a loss to the South Island and a gain to the North of one seat as compared with the position that held at the time that census was taken. In the ordinary course a census would have been taken and, perhaps$ a reapportionment of seats made in 1931, but for various reasons'that w.as not done and it is quite possible that, on the figures that might have been then presented,' the South Island has, for the last five years, been over-represented. In any event, on the finalised census returns of last year, North Island 938,939 and South Island 552,245, the Representation Commissions have now found that the North Island must now gain yet another seat -at the expense of the South, thus making a House consisting of 48 North Island and 28 South Island European members and, as before, 4 3V£aori members, three from the North Island and one from the South, Maori representation not being affeeted by population shifts. ~ When the latest census figures first appeared the South Island was apprehensive that it might even lose two seats to the North, and some hopes were entertained there that the Government might* intervene with new electoral legislation and, as it was put, "preserve to the South Island a measure of representation commensurate with its importance and influence." However, from the fact that the Representation Commissions have procCeded on the footing of the law as it now stands, it may be fairly assumed that nothing of this kind is in contemplation, while their findings as now annaiinced do not make matters quite as bad for the South Island as had at first been feared. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the readjustments provisionally submitted by the Commissions is the way in which they throw into relief the continued drift of population from the country to the urban centres. Thisf is indicated by the fact that two new electorates for the North Island a.re ta he constituted, one in the purlieus of Auckland and the other in those of Wellington, while the country is to lose one electorate, that of Oroua, now held by the Hon. J. G. Cobbe. Going back only to 1911, we find that urhan and rural populations almost halance, 502,840 and 500,620 respectively. Since then the urhan figure has grown to 885,218, while the increase in the rural has brought it up to only 601,594, the respective percentages thus being round ahout 60 to 40, as against the earlier 50-^—50. Beyond this the Statistician's figures reveal that a good deal over one-third (38^ per cent.) of the total white population of the Dominion is included in the four principal urban areas, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, and well. over one-half (51f f>er cent.) in these and the ten secondary urhan areas. The Auckland "urhan area" now carries just ahout one-seventh of the Dominion 's aggregate population and the Wellington just ahout one-tenth — proportions that fully account for the constitution of two new electorates with populations mainly drawn from these areas. As to the political implications to e found in Mie figures that have been thus cited readers may well be left to draw their own conclusions.