WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 April 1921, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE NEW POLITICAL PARTY. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, April 8. Air. C. E. Statham, the president of the National Progressive and Moderate Labor Party, has been in Wellington during the present week, and it is understood he and his associates have been employed in putting the finishing touches to the constitution of the new organisation. The party is to be based on the broadest conception of democracy, and its promoters will not proceed to the construction of a platform till it can fairly claim to be representative of the sane progressive thought of the country. Meanwhile there is a good deal of speculation as to how the movement is going to affect the strength of the other parties. The Moderate Labor members are distinctly interested in the movement, and the Independents on both sides of the House are awaiting developments with, undisguised curiosity. INDEPENDENT PROGRESS. But Air. Statham himself has no idea of embarking forthwith upon an aggressive campaign against any of the existing parties. He is not seeking to detach supporters from Air. Massey or Mr. Wilford or Air. Holland, but he believes there are a number of members who will be glad to be released from servile allegiance to any leader, and to be free to support progressive proposals that promise to make for the welfare of the .country and its people irrespective of their origin. He realises that so far as the present Parliament is concerned; there is no alternative to Mr. Alassey, least of all among the Prime Minister’s own colleagues, but he believes that there is a great deal of education work to do in Parliament and in the constituencies and that in due course the needs of the situation will produce the man. A FINANCIAL INDEX. A month ago, when the country race meetings were showing a very material decline in the totalisator business, it was proclaimed abroad that the financial stringency had its silver lining in the blow it was administering to the gambling evil. But a large increase in the amount of money passed through the machine at Auckland, a very trifling decline at Christchurch, and now subtantial increase on the first day at Wellington have put a complexion on the figures. A members of Parliament, a very sound financial authority, stated to-day that they show clearly enough that the financial stringency is being felt much more severely by the big investors than by the small ones. The land-owners and producers in the country districts, who previously gambled in tens and even hundreds, have been brought up with a round turn by the scarcity of money, but the wage-earners who congregate in the cities and bet in single pounds have not yet felt the pinch in anything like the same degree. He enforces his contention with quite a wealth of illustration. THE PRIME MINISTER’S PRESTIGE. The Prime Minister appears to have had a triumphal procession through the Taranaki district .on Thursday, where he hastened to make the .vacant Patea seat secure for his party. It is not that the existence of the Government depends upon retaining this seat, one of Mr. Massey’s friends explained to-day, but it is of vast importance that the Prime Minister should go to the Imperial Conference with his prestige unimpaired by a rebuff in a constituency that has stood by his party for many years. What will help the Reform candidate much more than the obligation placed upon the electors to maintain Mr. Alassey’s prestige, is the fact that there are two Richmonds in the field on the LiberalLabor side dividing the votes that will be cast without any particular concern for the representation of the Dominion at the Conference.