SERVICEMEN'S SETTLEMENT ACT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 18, 26 October 1943, Page 4

SERVICEMEN'S SETTLEMENT ACT

Sir,—According to the press re« ports the Bay of. PLnty Sub-provin-cial Executive of the NeAv Zealand Farmers' Union has recently passed some very drastic resolutions endorsing the action of the. .Auckland Provincial Executive and the Do* minion President (Mr W. W. Mulholland) in asking members to refrain from acting on any committee set up under the Servicemen's Settlement and Land Sales Act. Does that mean that farmers are against the servicemen obtaining land at a fair value after what they have done in resisting the menace of the. Japanese invasion ? What value would there lie in this land had the Japanese invasion been successful ? As this Act proposes to purchase only that land over and above the area required by a farmer which he can farm economically by his own and his family's efforts, it will affect only the land owner with more land than he can handle himself. The Government candidate for Tauranga electorate, gave an apt instance of land which, would be suitable for soldier settlement. It was a large area* of land in the Pahiatua district, owned by absentees who had never seen the farm, and was being managed and producing only a fraction of what it was capable of doing. Should not the people of New Zealand have the right to take such land at its fair value for the benefit of our returning servicemen ? Surely the people of New Zealand arc entitled, to have some reason for this organised attempt at sabotaging the efforts being made by the Government, to do the fair thing for our returning servicemen. Men who went overseas in the last war after returning found that the farms they sold, in order to go overseas were then impossible to be bought, this after the sacrifice they had made for the community. Are we going to allow our returning servicemen to be treated in this shameful way in the face, of past experience ? II the landowners of New Zealand have a better system of doing the fair and just thing to our boys why do not they bring down a scheme that is helpful and put it before the people of New Zealand ? An attitude of condemning the effort that is being made without putting a constructive solution is surely not helpful. The people- of New Zealand as a whole have endorsed, the action of the Government, but the rural section appears by present returns of the election to have gone further against the Government. Why ? Yours etc., LABOUR HAS A PLAN.