WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 May 1917, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

MUNICIPAL POLITICS. t A NEW ERA. (Special Correspondent). Wellington, May 4. Progressive people here who take a live interest in municipal politics, profess to be highly gratified by the result of of the Christchurch expc-.-inu'iit with proportional representation. Of course, the great majority of them have no sympathy witfli tiie anti-eonscriptif-n plank in the official Labor candidates' platform. That issue, they claim, was conclusively settled by Mr.' Holland's overwhelming victory over Mr. McC'ombs in the conJest for the Mayoralty. . Mr. McCombs had the advantage of being associated with overy popular cry for municipal reform, while" Mr. Holland suffered under ! the disadvantage of being championed by all the conservative, elements in the community, and yet the retiring mayor was re-elected by a majority of nearly seven thousand votes. That, the progressive? say, should silence the auti-conseriplior-ists in Christclmrch till the end of the war, if not till the end of their .lays. EQUITABLE REPRESENTATION. But the result of the polling, the return of nine "Citizen" candidates, live L'abor and two Independents, gives such an accurate representation of the party composition - of the constituency t.hnt it makes the very strongest, argument for the extension of electoral "reform throughout the country. The smoothness with which the voting under the new system proceeded in Christchurch is astonishing evc-ryone. Some of the well-meaning people who set out to explain to the electors the principles of proportional representation and the oporation of the single transferable vote, were not always conspicuously happy in their efforts, now and again their demonstrations tending to lead rather to confusion than to understanding, but the average intelligence of thr. electors stood them in good stead, and the mistakes they made in marking their ballot papers appear to have been very few indeed. It is not improbable, however, that a considerable number of electors are still in doubt as to just what; happened to their papers during that unconsciously long event. •T 1 SIMPLIFICATION. Discussing this point a local advocat? .of proportional representation urges the importance of reviewing the system of transferring the surplus votes provided by the Legislative Council Act before this suspended measure for making the Upper House elective, is brought into operation. This part of the Act is modelled ou the Tasnianiftn system, in which refinement has been added to refinement in the search for absolute accuracy till the various processes can be, followed only by the trained mathematical mind. Hail tho system been employed in Christchurch at the recent election the "counting" would still be going on. The system was a much simpler one, but there are many people with some practical knowledge of the subject who think even this too slow and complicated. The Proportional Representation Bili circulated by the Hon. Geo. Fowlds six years ago followed closely on Mr. Hare's original proposals and probably in practice it would have worked as well as any of th? ■later measures. EXTENDING THE PRINCIPLE. In the absence of Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward there is not much information to he gathered concerning the Government's present intentions in regard to electoral reform. Before the party truce Mr. Massey was for trying proportional representation on the dog, as it were,' by applying it to the Council before trying it on the. House, while Sir Joseph Ward was for adopting it in both Chambers. But it may be doubted if either of the leaders was very enthusiastic about, the reform in any direction or in any degree. Their colleagues of to-day are not giving much serious thought to the subject. The late Dr. McNab was a consistent supporter of proportional representation, and in his .Absolute .Majority Bill applied tho principle of the' reform as far as it could be applied to single electorates, which, it is scarcely necessary to say, was not very far. The rest of the Ministers are -well, content to hold their judgment in suspense.