PRESS OPINIONS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 1 October 1913, Page 4

PRESS OPINIONS.

There are many subjects for reform which "Liberal" Administrations have left behind them, but none cries aloud so insistently for immediate redress as the monopoly of licenses and of liquor supplies which has been allowed to grow, up under flheir protection. —Hastings Tribune. .

. The Prime Minister has now. tomake a choioe between abolishing, the Second Ballot system, and putting nothing in' its place (which,, as' Mr G: W. Russell has stated, "will not be allowed"), adopting the proportional system in email electorates, or establishing a method of preferential Voting. "Being oh the horns of several dilemmas, his only recourse is td look as wise as possible, and murmur:. "Wait and See ."—<3hristchurch,S*aa>;.

The whole business connected with) the Cook Islands is unsatisfactory ass the "Westport scandal. the Boyd Garliok appointment,, the Westland and: Canterbury Land' Board charges, and other recent occurrences whicn reflect; any thing; but credit up> on the Government whose members had so much: to say about the* improprieties of their predecessors^.and who. promised' to purify politics and give a "square deal."—Wangantti Herald.

The' preferential' system), would secure- the representation of majorities j its weakness being,, of. course, that it takes no account of minorities, which aro given'a clianoe by tlie'employment of tlie proportional 1 system in large constituencies. We must have electoral reform:, and. the transferable vote in single-member constituienoies appears to- afford the most feasible means of securing, it..—Tiniaru) Pest.