Remembrance of Things Past

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 389, 6 December 1946, Page 14

Remembrance of Things Past

Y the time this paragraph appears the election will no longer be bannerheadline news, but the pre-election Sunday Evening Talk from the Wellington Stations deserves fo be commemorated in a medium less lasting than bronze but more permanent than the air that received it. It was a good talk, and though perhaps few of us went to the polls consciously "sparing a thought for history" odd facts from this brief resumé of Néw Zealand’s electoral progress show promise of remaining in the memory till next polling day: We can, for example, when we hear of Parliamént adjourning for a long week-end, spare a thought for the ‘fifties, when Auckland was the capital city and it took Southland delegates up to eight weeks to get’ from Dunedin to Auckland. No prospect of Sunday dinner at home for them. And to the time when the property qualification was abolished and the rule laid down of one person one vote-with the special proviso that "person" must not be held to include females, But I should like to suggest that the word "generation" be used less frequently in public utterances: The speaker ended his talk dail

by stating that the principle of representational franchise had not been lightly won even in New Zealand-three generations fought to sustain it and two generations died to preserve it. The hyperbole may have "been forceful when newly minted. but repetition has now robbed it of its emotional impact.