TALK AND FACTS

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2153, 20 May 1914, Page 6

TALK AND FACTS

Tiieih? are a great many questions on which tho Leader! of tlw Opjiosilion can better sifford to exercise his eloquence than tho land rtucsiion, and his reference to closer settlement at Napier was particularly injudicious. • Those of the public whose memories wrvy them back a few .mm cannot fail to recall the

pathetic spectacle presented by successive Literal Ministers—more especially Mr, 11. M'Naij and Sift Joseph AVabb himself—during that period of continuous shuffling and hacking down which followed the advent tit Sm Joseph Warj> to office. Did not Mr. M'Nab in 1907 bombastically declare that the Government was "going to stand by its guns, and if necessary go down with them in the twinkling of an eye," and then add, "We are not going to float about for half a century banging on to the Treasury benches whilst the people are not able to make out what our lattd policy is" 1 And what followed i Backing and filling until iii 1909 Me. A. W. Hogg on retiring from the Ward Cabinet pathetically informed the country that "as ior the? Government's policy, I don't know what it is bow. I don't know that the House knows it, I don't know that the right hon. ©Milkman's colleagues know it. At all events it was never disclosed to me." Here two years after Mr. M'Nab's bold pronouncement we find a gentleman who had jasfc retired from the Ministry declaring that the policy was still missing, and that it bad never been disclosed to him even when & member of the Government. Again ] in 1909 we find Si& Joseph AVakb j himself admitting that "they would have the whole question of land thrashed out and settled this sc»*' sion." And again nothing was done; So the Government drifted—a pitiable spectacle of weakness and impotence. Yet at Napier a few days ago Sin Joseph Wakd blandly assured his. audience that ''when the time came the Liberals would lay down a system by which close settlement of the land would ,be brought ■about from end to end of New Zealand,'' This wonderful old political "gag" with which Sir Joseph Waub for so Many years has covered up his inability to produce s land policy seems never to grow .s'tala in the mind pi' the Loaderiof the Opposition. Almost from the day im attained the Premiership with the record majority left to hjm by. Mr. Sedbon, lie has bee®, going to press forward with- a definite policy of closer settlement, but no sooner docs he set out ■on his task than bis heart fails him, With a record majority at his back in Parliament, ho shirked it; and the more his majority dwindled) the lender was his talk of. what he was going to do. And never did bo talk more loudly or more vaguely on the subject than lie is doing to-day, whc-a there is n'o chance of putting him to tho test. It is hardly worth while taking Sir Joseph Ward'seriously just hqw, because he admits that lie has no policy to submit to the country, and oaji offer nothing bettor than wild anil sweeping promises of the very free things lie- will do for everyone— some day. He somehow .omitted to do those things during Ms twenty years in office, but that is a detail. Bnfc as he has touched upon the tines* tioft of closer settlement, and the providing of bind for - the landless, m would direct his attention to a few

any means harmonise with his professions, The first of these facts is that in 18.01, when the Literal Party earns into office, the proportion of adult men in New-ZealaftcJ who were landless was 73 per cent-. As the result of the twenty odd years of strew, >unts endeavour on the part of the ''Liberal" party—ro:ind<id oft in the later part-ion «f that terra by Sir. Joseph Ward himself—the proportion of landless adult men increased to X< per cent _ .Professions of good intentions, it will be seen, may -tickle the ears of the unthinking at election time, but they do not go very far towards putting the landless on the land. There is another fact which we would comment! to the attention -of those who, not knowing Slit Joskmi Ward's 'anxiety to please,: may take ovcr-seriously his platform professions. When he stuteeiled Mr. SKtinox as Premier there- were 415 estates in New Zealand of between 3000 and 3.0,000 acres., the yea-f ftillswving thfly increased to 436, then to 458, and in 1911 to §28- .And yet' Sir Joseph has been constantly telling the people of the Dominion of his intention to break up the- big estates, and how much his Government had done in that direction. So also with estates oi from 10,00(5 to 20,000 acres. Under Wardist rule these increased in number frem. 248 to 2-64. Even the huge estates of 50.000 acres and upwards showed an tho only estate? above 3000 acres to show any falling off in numbers being those between 20,C00 and 50,000 acres, which decreased by 31. The net iiiercjise in the number of the, big estates of the Dominion during the- Ward regime was 03—and, with these, facts 'confronting him, and the broken promises, of the 'past «n Sift Joseph Ward now repeats his old, old tale of a vague something to be done in a far away someday t.o bring about closer settlement..