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Taupo Times, Volume XIV, Issue 64, 17 August 1965, Page 2

in hope than expectation, the Local Government Commission has blown the dust off an old and thorny topic — compulsory voting, says the Napier Dally-Telegraph in a leading article. There is nothing undemocratic, the commission maintains inits annual report to Parliament, in requiring people to perform their duty of voting at an election.

In no other way, it is satisfied can there be any certainty that the results of polls reflect the wishes of the people. And there, since no government has ever chosen to grapple with the problem, tjhe matter will probably be allowed to rest. But if the report does nothing more, it calls attention again to one of this country's biggest poserS — • how to get people to the booths on polling day. Since this is election year, its observations are timely and to the point. Every (democratic) right, it points out, has a correlative duty; and if an elector is to have his democratic rights he should also perform his democratic duties, the most important of which is to take part in the government of the country, both Parliamentary and local. It remains a continuing reproach that electors in this country rarely give the same earnest attention to local body elections that they give to electing their representatives in Parliament. It is important public business, this three - yearly choice of city, borough and county councils and hospital, harbour and catchment boards, and yet it is seldom adequately discharged. Experience in Hawke's Bay in the past has shown that anything up to 40 per cent of electors in a city, town Or county at times ignore

local body elections, and the pattern is common, often to an even worse degree, in other parts of the country. At the 1959 elections, for instance, the Local Government Commission estimated that the national voting average in counties was 36.5 per cent, and in cities and towns 48.3 per cent. And there was only slight improvement in 1962. Ther e are various reasons for this trend, but they all add up to one word — apathy, with probably a dash of downright bone laziness thrown in for good measure. Local bodies in New Zealand have fewer functions and more restricted powers than those of some Other countries; and those functions tend to decline further — perhaps for the very reason that citizens are not sufficiently alert to preserve them. Yet the retention of some of the functions of government in local hands is surely indispensable to democratic government of the highest standard. Local government touches more intimately than the central government the day-to-day life of the community. Nothing can better protect the citizen agai nst remote bureaucratic control than strong local bodies, responsibly exercising adequate powers. Thus at the triennial local body elections the citizen has the opportunity not only to elect represen-