Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1913. THE COAL CONUNDRUM

Evening Post, Volume LXXXV, Issue 33, 8 February 1913, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1913.

THE COAL CONUNDRUM

After all the Prime Minister's " amuse* ment" at the fears expressed concerning the leakage of coal 'rights under last session's Land Act, and after all *.he allegations of the Government press about "mave'a nests," one o! the first, legal authorities on our land laws (Mr. T. F. Martin) has pronounced in the columns of the New Zealand Times an opinion utterly negatory to the Prime Minister's case and entirely confirmatory of the interpretation of the Act which this paper drew attention to in the public interest. Here is Mr. Martin's summing up of the Southland lease-in* perpetuity incident and of the general position :™ "The position is therefore that, before the passing of the Act of 1912, the owner of a lease-in*perpetuity under the Act 6f 1892 was entitled to purchase the fee simple, including coal, but he was required to pay the value, of the coal. Under the Act of 1912, the right to purchase the fee is granted, in just the same words a,s were used in section 20 of the Act of 1907, but, instead of a price which includes the value of the coal, he has only to pay the amount upon which his rent was computed, in this case £47, plus the 1 per cent, per annum and interest thereon." Note that Mr. Martin is very definite, while the Prime Minister, and such por» tion of the Crown Law Office's report as he has allowed to be published, have been indefinite. It has been appareht all along, and is made plain now, that the Prime Minister has been expressing an assurance that he hardly feels, and thereby lias created an ill-founded confix dence on the part of, the local Govern* ment organ. The piain question was whether this lessee-in'perpetuity, on ac- 1 quiring the fee simple on payment of surface value, also secured the right to (he coal. If the question had been simple, the Prime Minister could easily have disposed of it by a plain "Yes" or "No." ißut he did not, nor does any such p^ain Yea or Nay appear in 1 the report of the Crown Law Office. That portion of the report published by the Prime Minister, in what appears 1 to be its summing-up, says that the lessee-in-perpetuity, on conversion to fee simple, " does not become the purchaser of the minerals." It does not state that I he "does not become the owner of the coal." Mr. Massey himself has also avoided such simplicity of language. All through he has talked about "minerals" ; but >in his very first statemeht, published on 2nd February, he said : "t know that coal is technically not a mineral within the meaning of the Mining Act." The next day the Evening Post asked Mr. Massey, in a leading article, the following specific question : "Has this Southland lessee-in-perpetuity, by taking advantage of Mr. Massey' s Land Act, obtained the freehold, and with it the right to mine the coal, on payment of surface value only?" Note carefully the terms of Mr. Massey'a answer, made through our junior contemporary on the following day : ','The purchase of the fee simple does not carry with it the right to mine a mineral-bearing country. The fee simple of the land in this case, and in many others, does not carry with it the right to the' minerals beneath the surface." Yet, while picking his language so carefully to avoid the j.x>int, Mr. Massey would have the world believe that he was all the time c6ckaure and merely "amused" at the views pressed upon him. In his statement of 2nd February he said : "I am quito satisfied that the Crown has a right to resume at surface value." If the coal was hot parted with, why resume ? And what about the sacredness of the freehold? Another instance of the way in which Mr. Massey's secondary points undermine his primary' ones is found in his remark at Hastings that "even if a dozen men got their land at less (price) than they should have done, it was nob going to prevent his Government from giving the settlers of New Zealand what they have been asking for so long— -the freehold of the land they work." So while the Prime Minister is certain that he has not lost the coal, he is siill thinking of resuming it at surface value, and at the same 1 time reflecting that it does not matter much anyway. Another instance of Mr. Massey's double line of thought is his statement that, though everything is all right, there will be special legislation next session. When he looks into matters, we would not be surprised if he were to decide— if he has not already decided—that the' legislation is urgent. It would be interesting to know lxow many mineral-bearing leaßes-in-perpetuity throughout New Zealand are involved in this question, and possibly tfre Prime Minister may yet find it in Ms interest to take the country into his 4 tofidence and publish the whole of the t town , Law Office's report, which yestyrday he refused to do. One thing 3\fr. Martin's opinion has placed beyond all doubt—that this qviestion is no ' 'mare's nest," but a matter of grave ioipqrt, and that the service done in the public interest by those who pressed the joint compares very significantly with the signal disservice to the State rendered by the persons who attempted, for mere party purposes, to belittle the ileue.