"NO TOBACCO-NO WORK"

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 54, 1 September 1943, Page 6

"NO TOBACCO-NO WORK"

State Miners' Decision

P.A. GREYMOUTH, This Day. "No tobacco—no work" was the decision made by a meeting of the Liverpool State miners this morning. They returned home pending satisfaction being received. An amendment to work meanwhile was defeated. A union meeting will be held tonight to discuss the question. The tobacco shortage throughout the district was relieved today.

stances were ttieye and the people took advantage of them in selling land to the soldiers." . When the Land Sales Bill had been first shown to the representatives of the R.S.A. it had been purely a Bill to stabilise the.price of land, and there had been nothing in it about the settlement of servicemen. . When they next saw it the title had been changed, and the powers of acquisition had been inserted. . • • ■ He did not want members to get any exaggerated ideas about the harmful effects of the measure, he added, because there was as yet nothing about which the public should become unduly alarmed, though he personally disagreed with many of the provisions. Under the Act as finally passed the Government could not take any land unless it was for soldier settlement. It could not take a house, nor town land. And when the State took farm land for soldier settlement, it could be done only at a productive value established as at December 15, : 1942. The R.S.A. had had some budgets worked out to see how this provision would affect the sale of certain properties, and in each case the vender had received a shock. Based on 4£ per cent, on the productive value as on the date mentioned, the price had been so high that the venders would be pleased if the Government would come along and take their farms from them. In reply to a question, Mr. Bell said the R.S.A. believed that the returned serviceman of today should have the same right as was given to the soldier after the last war of acquiring the freehold of his farm, the same right as was possessed by many classes of Crown tenants today. Certainly less than 10 per cent, of the soldiers from the last war had exercised that right of purchase, but the right should'remain. Under this legislation the soldier did not have the right of purchasing the freehold. When the Government , purchased land for soldier settlement, the price did not necessarily have any relation to the figure at which the soldier acquired it, because the soldier would be settled at a productive value, based on a figure' at which he could make good. The only way in which a serviceman could buy a freehold farm today was through the rehabilitation scheme of the State Advances, but here a^gain the dual problem of property shortage and uneconomic price were inhibiting factors.