WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 27 December 1929, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS

HUTT ELECTION FINAL RESULT LABOUR’S VOTE INCREASED. (Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, December 23. The final count of the recent Hutt election figures was published this morning, showing that Mr Nash (Labour) increased his total number of votes to 0,047, Mr Kerr ( United) his to 4,833 and Mr Johnston his to 2,570. These figures leave Mr Nash with a majority of 212 over Mr Kerr, and Mr Kerr with a majority of 2,477 over Mr Johnston. Of the total number of valid votes recorded 40.7 per cent were cast for Mr Nash, 29 per cent., for Mr Kerr and 20.3 per cent, for Mr Johnston. In the present House of Representatives there are seven members who were returned by a smaller proportion of votes than Mr Nash secured last week and five by a smaller proportion than Mr Kerr secured. The Reform Party in the present house has no fewer than eighteen ‘.‘minority” representatives and so scarcely can throw stones at Mr Nash on the score of his having secured fewer than one half of the votes polled. ‘‘THE STRONGEST PARTY.” The ‘‘Dominion” this morning finds solace for Mr Coates and his followers however, in the fact that the substitution of a Labour member for a United member in the representation of the Hutt constituency has made the Retform Party the strongest in the House. “Strongest” surely is not the adjective appropriate to the occasion. The Opposition has not secured the slightest addition of strength by Mr Nash stepping into Mr Wilford’s shoes On the contrary, it is destined to meet in the new member for Hutt a much more incisive and destructive critic than the old one ever choose to be. Mr Wilford is eminently adapted for the office of High Commissioner, but not so for the political arena. Before another election comes round, Reform will be sorry for his withdrawal from the House. The decline in the United and Labour votes at the recent election was due, of course, to the Reformers daring to put a candidate of their own into the field after a lapse of seven years.

THE ROYAL SHOW. Christchurch, Palmerston North and Auckland will have to bestir themselves ilf. they wish to keep on terms with Southland in staging the annual Royal Show. Visitors from the north who went south this year with the idea that Invercargill had taken on a responsibility it could not discharge in assuming the staging of the great exhibition, have returned with the warmest eulogies of the whole undertaking “I am inclined to think,” Mr G. A. Troup, the Mayor of Wellington, told the newspaper here, “that this year’s show was the best I ever have seen. There were- more entries than there were at Palmerston and the quality of the exhibits were fully maintained, \ while the management was admirable The enthusiasm of the local people was simply splendid and they had reason to be proud of their district and their show. The clays I was there the attendance was between 25,000 and 30,000 and I never have seen a more interested crowd.” Mr Troup’s eulogy is endorsed by numbers of other visitors. A LIVE COMMUNITY. An Auckland business man, a visitor to the show, after endorsing, with emphasis, Mr Troup’s eulogy of the display' and its management, went on to applaud the splendid spirit of the Southland people. It was his first visit to Invercargill, and he had not been five miles beyond the bounds of the town, except by rail, but had seen more proportionate energy and life and enterprise in the place than he. had seen in any other centre of populatin in the Dominion during the forty years he had been shifting himself. The stock at the show appeared to him the equal of any he ever had seen in the Dominion and the bearing and interest of the crowd was phenomenal. He even had praise for the local newspapers which, he said, in addition to excellent reports of the proceedings had turned out a veritable encylopaedia of Southland which was worth more than the charge at the gate. The southern province seems to have made a very real impression upon its visitors.