Disjointed Politics.

Taihape Daily Times, 11 July 1918, Page 4

Disjointed Politics.

THE FARMERS’ DISCOVERY. PROPOSED REFORMS. (Contributed.) Several branches of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union have discovered there is something sadly wrong with the political system of this country. They been watching the operation of party government and they have seen it is extravagant, inefficient, undemocratic and positively immoral. With them to recognise a truth is to proclaim it to the world. They have placed on the agenda paper for the annual conference of the Union to be held in Wellington at the end of this month a series of motions, conflicting in some respects, but all aiming at the substitution of a good system for a bad one and all deserving the careiul consideration of the community. One wants “an improvement in our Parliamentary system,” another wishes to “do away with party government,” a third demands “the Elective Executive” and others insist upon “the best brains in the country being utilised ia attaining national efficiency during this time of crisis,” and presumably during all ether times. Of the earnestness of these advocates of reform, who may or may not constitute a majority of the members of the Union, there can be no doubt. Their proposals have the unmistakable'ring of sincerity. But it is not quite so clear that they have gone to the root of the trouble that is vexing their souls. They all dwell on the “Parliamentary system,” but not one of them as much as mentions the electoral system. THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM.

A moment’s examination of the facts, however, should convince the reformers that before we can hope for any great improvement upon the present Parliamentary system or the present party system we must effect a very radical change in the electoral systm. With the most democratic franchise in the world, with universal suffrage ang one-elector-one-vote, we hitherto have failed t 6 devise a system of election that would give us the full advantage of the great opportunities we enjoy. We hold on jealously and parochially to the shadow of popular representation and , s fear to grasp the substance. Here is space only for a fragment of the accumulated evidence that is rising up against us. Of the 515,907 votes recorded at the last general election only 214,555 ■were employed in returning the seven-ty-six European members to the House of Representatives. The rest of the votes were cast either for defeated candidates or for candidates * that did not require them. (In the twenty Wellington constituencies, dividing the Dominion into four great electoral districts, 65,910 votes were polled for Liberal-Labour candidates and 64,906 for Reform candidates and yet the Liberal-Labour party only secured six seats While the Reform party secured fourteen. A still more shocking miscarriage of our electoral ideals occurred in the twenty Canterbury constituencies. In these constituencies 78,814 votes were cast for Liberal-Labour candidates and 52,355 % for Reform candidates, and yet while the Liberal-Labour party secured sixteen seats the Reform party secured only four, THE ELECTIVE EXECUTIVE. With an electoral system which gives such results as these it is futile to talk of reforming the Parliamentary system or abolishing the party system or even obtaining the best brains in the country for the service of the State. Nor would the institution of an Elective Executive, which is so often urged as a panacea for all the evils of party Government, do away with party government itself. It has not done so in Switzerland, the country that is being held up to us as an example and an inspiration in the winter of our political discontent. The constitution of the Swiss Republic is the most picturesque and effective of the nvidely different tics that bind the peoples of the Earth into nations; but it does not banish all the defects of human nature nor entirely bar the way of the designing politician. It provides for two legislative chambers, as we have in this country, the National Council and the Council of State, and sitting in joint session these two bodies elect the Federal Cabinet of seven and its chairman, 'who is known as the President of the Confederation. What happens in this election in Switzerland is just what would happen in a similar election here. The members of the dominant party in the two branches of the Legislature meet In caucus and agree to concentrate their whole force on a single candidate for the presidency and seven candidates for the Federal Cabinet. The result is exactly the result we obtain here. THE WAY OUT . The saving grace of the Swiss system of Government is not the elective executive nor the Referendum, as cer-

tain branches of the Farmers’ Union seem to imagine, but the broad basis of its representation. A Cabinet elec, ted by a party might be better than, one selected by a party leader, but ia nine cases out of ten its constitutioa would be practically the same. Referendum, again, can be. applied only to big xonGrete questions which admit of but alternative. It can-

not express the views of the electors on each of the six hundred clauses in a Local Government Bill or a Land Settlement Bill. But a simple system of electing members of Parliament which would give every shade of public opinion the exact proportion of representation to which it wag- entitled, would prevent 'the enormouh’Wa'bte of votes that is going on now, would greatly lessen party asperities and would place many of-the best brains in the country at the 'disposal of the community. There still, of course, would be majority rule, but there would be universal representation and such as were inflicted upon thousands of the electors throughout the Dominion in 1914 would be impossible. These things cannot be effected by the Elective Executive or by the Referendum, but they all could be accomplished by a simple, infallible system of Proportional Representation and it is towards this end that the Farmers’ Union and every other body concerned for the advancement of the Dominion and the welfare of its people should be turning their energies in this time of stress and change.