CHEVIOT LEASES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 236, 5 October 1928, Page 3

CHEVIOT LEASES.

PROVISION OF THE FREEHOLD ELEVENTH-HOtJR DISCOVERY. (Bj Telegraph.—Parttamentarr Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. One feature of the Land Laws Amendment Bill, which was under discussion in the House of Representatives to-night, is the provision of freehold for lessees on Cheviot estate. "Are they in financial difficulties which they cannot overcome without the freehold ?" asked Mr. Savage (Auckland West), who commented on the fact that the Minister of had scarcely mentioned this clause in dealing with the bin. Mr. Savage answered his own question by stating that the general election was near, and that, as the Government had been discredited from the North Cape to the Bluff for its lack of land policy, he could not help thinking the Cheviot clause was a bid for support. Mr. Ransom (Pahiatua) suggested that the clause was for the benefit of a few favoured settlers. The bill generally was on good lines, though it did not go far enough. The Hon. O. J. Hawken (Minister of Agriculture) remarked that it was the Government's policy to give lessees the right to acquire the freehold, and he believed Cheviot lessees were the only ones who had not yet obtained that privilege. The success of Cheviot was due wholly to the fact that the land was bought cheaply. It had been rising in value ever vnce, and the only occasion on which land values dropped in the history of the Dominion was during the last few years. If freehold for the settlers of Cheviot was such a desirable thing, how was it, asked the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Holland) that the Reform Government, which had believed in freehold for sixteen years, had only now, on the eve of a general election, found it out.