A PARLIAMENT OF FRACTIONS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2456, 20 July 1922, Page 3

A PARLIAMENT OF FRACTIONS.

EVILS OF PROPORTIONAL AHSREPRESENTATION. 'V ■- j _______ RULE OF THEORY OR ' PRACTICE. To have Parliament made up of a number of groups, each assured that it alone is right and prepared to sacrifice everything for its own interest, is the greatest curse that can enter into the polities of any country. We have far too much of that sort of thing already in New Zealand. In our present Parliament there ' are the Reform Party, the Wilford Party, Holland Party, and the , remnant of Liberals not attached to Air Wilford’s Party, Mr Statham’s prospective party and the Independents. Sad it is to relate that a number of our politicians are i anxious to fix parliamentary representation permanently on a basis of such sectional control. They want what they call proportional representation —a system which the Sydney Bulletin names “contortional misrepresentation.” Give each section of thought its due share and we shall have an all round just system of representation is the argument of these advocates. What they fail to recognise is that practical politics is not a matter of theory and representation for purpose of good government is not a matter of mathematical calculations. The division of Parliament into a number of fractions means de'lv, intrigue, domination by the most cunning and geeral misrepresentation of the people outside.

In New South Wales the extremist Labour Party which swore by proportional representation, as the similar party does in New Zealand, is now convinced that the scheme is a failure. At its recent Conference a resolution was adopted by 77 votes to 55 that proportional representation should be abolished and the single electorates restored. Certainly the experience of N.S.W. with regard to P.R. is not one to he repeated. The doctrinaire idea of giving full effeet to the rights of minorities ignores the very important principle that majority rule is safest and the very best wav of ensuring greater responsibility and definite lines of policy. The dictum of Lincoln is, still sound liiat “a majority held in restraint by constitutional checks ami balances is the only legitimate sovereign of a free people.” The indictmen of the proportional system of 'representation as given by the Sydney Bulletin appears to us as being such as to call for most serious cousid va tion. The system has, >4t says : (1) swollen the cost < f elections both to the country- and the .candidate, in the latter resptnjl increasing the power of the machine; (2) set up sordid divisions between, members of the same party by inducing a desperate scramlve for No. 1 votes; (3) destroyed the old and useful intimacy between the politician and his. constituency; (4) absurdly complicated the machinery for the provision of local wants and the redress of grievances; and (5) deprived the people of thed .right to vote at by-elections, arfsnstifntion of the greatest value. Contortiomil misrepresentation should be discarded, and the sooner the betterjyin favour of preferential voting with single electorates, as in Westralia. As an agitation for the adoption of proportional representation is going on in New Zealand it is well thdt we should consider these Australian experiences. (Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League.)