NATIVE LANDLORDISM.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1205, 14 August 1911, Page 7

NATIVE LANDLORDISM.

• HOW TAXATION IS EVADED. (By Telccraph.—Sucelnl Correspondent.! Auckland, August 13. Some of the defects of Native landlordIsm as practised in New Zealand were touched upon by Mr. H. Marslaud, of the Raglan County Council, in an address to tho Auckland Chamber,of Commerce. Mr. Marsiand said tho Native rating trouble was not a local, but a provincial, problem. European settlers had for years been sending up tho valiio of unoccupied Maori land purely by their efforts to bring about development. -Evidence of that was forthcoming in a case in which 40 Europeans had borrowed .£BOOO for making roads in IMC. A large block of Native land in the locality was then valued at 15s. per acre. When the Europeans, without any assistance from tho Natives, had completed their roads, tho Government steppod in nnd bought this Native block at £2 per acre. When the 1801 Act first came into operation, it was hoped that tho machinery had at last been provided for compelling tho Maori owner to pay his rates, and so bcax his fair sharo of road-making and other work. Tho rolls wero newly compiled, and, at tho end of tho first year, rat.9 notices were sent out. Tho Natives, as before, refused to pay in Raglan, Taranaki, tho Bay of and elsewhere. Legal action was takeu, and judgments secured. The Act provided, however, that no judgment, could ho enforced without the sanction of tho Minister for Native Affairs. That sanction the Minister had always resolutely declined to give. Then in 1909 a conference was held in Auckland, 20 counties being represented and seven members of Parliament being pressnt. At that conference a unanimous resolution was passed, asking for amended legislation. Nest, said Mr. Marsiand, came tho Eating Amendment Act of last session, which, now that it was in operation, placed the local bodies in just as unsatisfactory a position as ever. Tho Act was useless owing to its restrictions. Section 8 of the Act had the effect of making a judgment against one or more of tho nominated owners or occupiers, equal in .all respects to a judgment upon a summons or writ served upon each one of the individual owners or occupiers. It was only reasonable to expect that tho judges of the Nativo Land Courts would insist that ..a notice of such judgment be served on each of them by tho fact . that it had already been entered up against them. Although there was no requirement in the' Act in Bpecific terms that a notice of tho judgment should be served on each of the occupiers, yet it seemed necessary that such 'should be done, as it was always tho policy and rnle of legal tribunals to : demand whenever possible that tho party proceeded ngainst should have knowledge of tho fact. The Native Land Court would refuse to make an order until minntes of the judgment had been served on every native interested. It would take months and months for a local body to locate the owners in most blocks. To find four nominated owners in a block owned by ICO Maoris would be easy enough, but to locate the other flf! would bo an interminable proceeding. Under last year's Act therefore the local bodies were no better off, and the Natives were still exempt from their responsibilities as land-owners. When the local bodies. did possess the power to rate these lands then the whole Native land problem would be settled. In conclusion Mr. Marsiand said that the only remedy in his opinion was to put the Natives'on the same footing as the Europeans, so that if they did not pay their rates the local body would have power to at once recover against their lands. If this was considered too arbitrary then the Government should pay the rates to local bodies each year' on blocks of over 500 acres and charge the amount so paid against tho land, vith interest.