SOLDIER SETTLEMENT OFFER

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 126, 25 February 1928, Page 10

SOLDIER SETTLEMENT OFFER

REQUEST TO MR. RANSOM The Minister of Lands (Hon. A. D. McLeod), in his public address at Te Awamutu invited Mr. E. A. Ransom, M.P. for Fahiahia, to permit him to disclose the price at which Mr. Ransom offered his property for soldier settlement, together with the Government valuation at the time of the offer.

“Mr. Forbes’s fellow political apostle in the Nationalist er United Party’s interests, Mr. E. A. Ransom, the member for Pahiatua,” said the Minister, “had a lot to say recently about the squatters, big sheepowners, aggregation, etc. If Mr. Ransom had wished to be perfectly frank with so far afield an audience as he was addressing he would have admitted that he himself was the owner of an aggregated holding, and that of the -25,600 owners of flocks, he is one of the 500 odd who own 6,000 sheep or over. If the subdivision of aggregated sheep runs is a virtue, I know of no one in a better position to prove it than the member of Pahiatua with his own property. “Mr. Ransom is also very keen on criticising the Government for purchasing laud for soldier settlement at a figure far above Government taxing value. I have no intention of using Departmental files against any man without his consent, but if Mr. Ransom asks me to do so I shall publish the price he asked the Government for a property of his own for soldier settlement purposes, and also the Government valuation of the property at the time the offer was made.

“I have no desire to speak hard of any man, or to hit below the belt politically or otherwise, but if those in glass houses start throwing stones, they are very apt to get splinters of glass under their own skins.”