THE CENSUS

Taranaki Daily News, 15 January 1917, Page 7

THE CENSUS

NORTH ISLAND NEARLY 200,000 AHEAD OF SOUTH.

By Telcgraph.—Press Association. Wellington. Saturday. The count of the iciiMir. shows the North Island population to be (i 42,. r >,"3, an increase of 77,82-1, excluding military camps, aim 57,502, including military eanips. The population cf the South Island is 448,004, an increase on mil of 3329.

I'AIiLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION GAIN'S jy THE NORTH ISLANi/. (By Telegraph—Special Correspondent.) Wellington, Last Night. The large increase in the population of the North Island, as rcveaHl oy the census returns .published on Saturday, !'.a* led many people here to assume that the South Island will lose at least four repiesentatives in Parliament, or probably five. The increase ot population in the North is 78,824, and in the South 3,320, and by assuming that, the new electoral quota —the number of persons that is required to constitute an electorate—will he somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000, and by divMing the increase by that figure, it is eas> to reach the conclusion that the North will gain fom or five .seats in the House, but the re-adjustment docs not work out in quite this simple A - ny. The proecs' prescribed by the Statute is for the representative commissioner -to take the total population, and to add to this figure the 28 per cent, allowed to rural residents, and then divide the result by the number of European seats in the House to ascertain the quota. With the total population at 1,000,017. and the allowance to rural .esidents estimated at 152,(>50, the quota, works out roughly at 10,300. It is believed that the -iiral population is about equally distributed between the two Islands, and, if this is actually the case, the total nominal population of the north will be 715,500 and the South 524,407. These figures, divided by the quota 10,300, give as nearly as possible 44 seats for the North | Island and 35 for the South, a gain of two for • the residents on this side of Cook Strait. The fact that a large portion of the North's gain ; s to the city of. Auckland and its suburb:, leprives it, by the operation of the country quota, of a large part of the advantage it otherwise would have secured from the increase in its population,

KOKTI-1 OUTSTRIPPING! THF SOUTH.

The fact? revealed by the "ensus figures will not surprise those who have followed the official jnd unofficial predictions. The population of the Dominion increased by OQ.fIOO odd during the period of five years and a half between the mil census and the 1010 census, but of this increase onVy 3,329 belonged to the South Island. The North Island shows an increas- of S>7,.)fl'2, or, excluding the military camps, of 77,324. It snould he remembered that at the date of the census over , r >0,(100 men had left New Zealand with the Expeditionary Forces, neariy 25,000 if them coming from the 3onth Island. The military camps, situated in the North Island, contained several thousand southern men. But even when all allowance has been made for these facts, it is clear that the North has far outstripped ■ the South in rate of growth, and that the* North Island is likely to gain three seats at the expense of the South Island when the electoral boundaries .are next adjusted.