Review of Kevieat, 1/0/06. 



THE TASMANIAN ELECTIONS. 



By a Non-Partisan. 



[The following trenchant criticism of the Tasmanian 

 most eminently fitted to give a clear, concise word-picture 



THE WOMEN'S VOTE. 



An unusual amount of interest centred in the 

 general election for the return of representatives to 

 the Tasmanian House of Assembly held on March 

 29 for several reasons, one of which was that it was 

 the first general State election at which the women 

 of Tasmania recorded their vote. For some time 

 previously very strenuous endeavours had been 

 made, by means of political associations of various 

 kinds, to educate the women on political subjects 

 and to train them to a sense of their new responsi- 

 bilities. The principal societies which undertook 

 this preparatory educational work were the Women's 

 Political League, the Women's National Council, 

 and the Women's Division of the National Associa- 

 tion, while Labour organisations, such as the 

 Workers' Political League, generally invited their 

 women folk to attend their meetings, and on all 

 occasions, of course, endeavoured to imbue them 

 with the notion that their principal duty now they 

 had the franchise was to exercise it in favour of 

 Labour men. Meetings of one or other of these 

 societies were constantly being held, but the signi- 

 ficant feature about most of them was that the work- 

 ing women, whom they were specially intended to 

 benefit, kept religiously away. The one question 

 which seemed to interest the women most was that 

 of Local Option. Although Tasmania is admittedly 

 the most temperate State in the Commonwealth, yet 

 even there the Drink Fiend has done, and is doing, 

 incalculable harm, from which, as in every other 

 countr)', the women and children are the first to 

 suffer. The principle of gi^'ing the people the 

 right to decide how many public-houses there should 

 be in a district commended itself to the women's 

 commonsense, and they are understood to have 

 voted strongly for the Opposition in the belief that 

 they were in eaniest in the matter, and that if they 

 were returned a Local Option measure worth having 

 would soon be an established fact. The proportion 

 of women who exercised the franchise was smaller 

 than that of the men — 42I per cent., as compared 

 with 62J per cent. — but this was only to be expected 

 considering the novelty of the event, and will pro- 

 bably be a diminishing proportion as time goes on. 

 But the women were not the only ones who voted for 

 temperance reform, as was evidenced by the over- 

 whelming number of Local Optionists who were re- 

 turned, so that one of the very first measures to be 

 put through the new House will almost certainly 

 be some law dealing with the subject on practical, 

 common-sense lines. 



Elections will be acceptable to our readers. The writer is 

 of the recent contests without fear or favour. — Editor.] 



WHAT WAS THE BATTLE ALL ABOUT? 



Having said so much with regard to the part 

 played by the women, the question arises : What 

 was the main dividing line between the parties. Li 

 other words: What was the battle all about? This 

 is by no means such an easy question to answer as 

 it looks. The old fiscal issue which used to divide 

 parties into two such clearly-marked hostile camps 

 has, of course, disappeared, and no very tangible 

 war cry has taken its place. But if I were asked 

 to define the most distinctive vote of the campaign 

 I should sum it up as Conservatism versus Labour- 

 dom. There were several important issues which- 

 the electors laid hold of as embodying in more or 

 less concrete form the rival parties' distinctive 

 planks. There was Local Option, to which refer- 

 ence has already been made, and which the Opposi- 

 tion tried to appropriate as sacred to themselves ; 

 there was the Ability Tax, gauging a man's ability 

 to pay by the size of his house, which had been 

 first introduced by the Evans Government, and was 

 vehemently denounced as grossly inequitable by the 

 Opposition, and which was particularly obnoxious 

 to the working-classes ; there was free education, 

 which the irresponsible Opposition and the Labour 

 Party advocated for all it was worth, but which the 

 more cautious, because more responsible Govern- 

 ment in power was unable to support for lack of 

 funds ; there was the policy of closer settlement by 

 the purchase of big estates, which both sides ad- 

 vocated because it was popular, but which the 

 Government had not as yet done very much to earn' 

 out ; there was the proposed discontinuance of Tat- 

 tersall's, which was only advocated by a few, and 

 did not count for very much ; and finallv there 

 was the question of land value taxation apart from 

 improvements, which the people generally favoured, 

 and which p)erhaps more than any other was re- 

 garded as the Labour Party's plank. These were 

 the main issues on which the election was heH. 



A POPULAR PREMIEE. 



There was a widely-spread feeling in favour of 

 reforms which the Government were too Conserva- 

 tive to grant, but on the other hand it was generally 

 acknowledged that the Premier and Treasurer (Hon. 

 J. W. Evans) deserved well of the countr^• for the 

 careful manner in which he had steered the State 

 vessel through a very difficult voyage, that the 

 lessening receipts from Federal sources and the 

 continual uncertain^,' as to what those receipts 

 would be, increased his difficulties a hundredfold, 



