THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTION.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 27, 26 October 1937, Page 4

THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTION.

So far as figures are yet revealed by cable messages, Saturday* s generai election of members of the House of Representatives in tKe Commonwealth Parliament would appear to have resulted very much as was widely expected. The Government' s majority in tha't chamber will be slightly reduced, at the same time, however, leaving it with a quite substantial working margin of votes. For the vacant seats in the Senate, or Upper House, however, something of a surprise has been worked, the present forecast Being that the Labour Party will there very greatly increase its representation. So that the position may be the better understood it may be as well to explain the constitution of the Federal Parliament. It consists of the two chambers, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate consists of 36 members of whom six are drawn from each of the six constituent States of the Commonwealth, regardless altogether of relative populations. The Federal Constitution provides that the Senators shall be elected for six years, but it has been so arranged that the term of one half of the members shall expire at the end of every third year, when they are eligible for re-election. In the present instance it would seem that there are nineteen seats to be filled, there being no doubt a pasual vacancy among those which in the ordinary way will not come up for election for another three years. Then in elections for the Senate the whole of each State constitutes an electorate, the result being that as a rule the great majority of electors, according to party predilections, vote for a block group of three f avoured candidcitcs. As was mentioned here a few days back,. leaving out a speaking but voteless representative for the Northern Territory, the Lower House just now consists of 74 members apportioned among the States according to population numbers. Then each State is divided into single electorates corresponding with the number of members to which it is entitled. In these electorates the polling proceeds ,in v.ery much the Same way as at our own generai elections, excepting that when the votes comes to be counted, unless some candidate scores an absolute majority of the primary votes cast, a system of preferential apportionment is adopted. It is this that accounts for the delay in announcing final results. In view of the suggestion that the Government may find itself with only a narrow margin of votes in the Senate it is of interest to note what occurs in the case of a conflict of voting belween the two chambers. The provision made for this is that, should the Senate fail to pass, or pass with amendments, any proposed law previously passed by the House of Representatives and should the latter House, after an interval of three months, again pass the proposed law, with or without the amendments of the Senate and should the Senate for a second time reject it or introduce amendments not agreeable to the Lower House, then the Govcrnor-General may dissolve the two Houses simultaneously. It will thus be seen that the Senate can at the worst merely prove obstructive and cannofc force any legislation that is not approved by the House of Representatives. Thus it may be said that any catch success the Opposition may have scored in the Senatorial elections will not be of really vital importance, especially as it is not at present thought that the Government 's majority in the Senate will be altogether wiped out. The main thing to be noted is that for the chamber whence the initiative in policy, legislation and administration proceeds the people have pronounced quite definitely for a continuation of the present Government in office. This, of course, . means a verdict in favour of the sane and safe policy which that Government has pursued and which has helped very 'materially to lift the Commonwealth out of a depression that weighed quite as heavily upon it as upqn our own little country. There the industriai and commercial life of the country has been allowed to take advantage of better times in order to extricate and develop itself along lines well assured by experience, and with a minimum of any but helpful intervention on the part of the Government. One outstanding result has been that the thousands of unemployed of the depression years have been almost entirely re-absorbed into gainful occupations of a permanent character without any resort to extravagant expenditure on public works for which there is no immediate economic call.