WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 November 1922, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE PRIME MINISTER. HIS NORTHERN TOUR. SPECIAL TO GUARDIAN. WELLINGTON, Nov. 13. Mr M assey returned to town yester- ! day from his flying tour 111 rough vari- ! oils parts of the North Island well I pleased with his reception everywhere and confident of success at the approaching polls. His main plea to the audiences he addressed was for a stable Government. “I ask you in your own interests,” he said at a score of places” to give the Government a working majority. 1 am not asking that tor myself. I have had ten most strenuous years at the head of the affairs of this country, and 1 have had all the honours that the country can give me. That does not mean that 1 am looking forward to retirement. I am net going to retire. I expect to die in harness. But I am telling you in your own interests you should see that a, competent, stable and experienced Government is in office during the next year or two.” Mr Massey did not indicate exactly at any of his meetings what numerical superiority he would regard as a working majority, hut as he has managed to get along very well in the expiring Parliament with an advantage of fourteen or fifteen votes it is being assumed a similar margin would satisfy him again. HEALTH AND POLITICS.

Mr Massey’s allusion to his expectation to die in harness has set the gossips busy again with the discussion of his health. Of course they prefer the assumption that the Prime Minister is taxing his marvellous constitution to the breaking point and that he is in danger of collapse at any moment. But ns a matter of fact ho is in better health than he was a month or so ago and though lie persists in putting a tremendous strain upon his reserve strength he has suffered little from his whirl of travelling and speaking. He realises—though he would he the last to admit the fact—that the election must he won by his own unaided efforts, and that anything lie leaves undone to secure-success will remain undone. His political opponents, as sincerely as .his personal friends, will hope that his expectation to die in harness does not apply to the Parliament about to be elected or to the next or to the one after that, but so long as the consummation is indefinitely deferred the ambition is quite a natural and laudable one. ELECTORAL REFORM.

Mr Massey continues to deny the need for electoral reform and to denounce the operation ol proportional representation. The Reform Party could win when there was a direct contest between a Reform candidate and one other candidate, he said in several of his touring speeches. But when votes were scattered over three or more candidates, no party eould he sure of getting an absolute majority. Mr Wilford and Mr Holland were both minority representatives. He had left fifteen electorates uncontested in 1919, lint lie had no lack of candidates this year. They were falling over one another. Some electorates had surplus Reform candidates in the field, but he believed that the number of these extra candidates would be reduced before election day. This question of electoral reform is one of the few subjects on which Mr Massey flounders badly. He still denies that the Government represents a minority of the electors, hut does not attempt to explain how it came to have a huge majority of the votes cast against it at the last general election.