Government Land Administration.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 298, 23 June 1896, Page 2

Government Land Administration.

Mr Pirani, M.H.R., in his speech on tho Address-in-Reply, said ;— I would like to say a word or two about the administration of the land department. The Minister denied an assertion which has been made about the failure of the special settlements in the North Island. I have been through almost every special settlement in the Wellington district, and I say advisedly that nearly every one, as far as the original selectors are concerned, is a failure. And why ? Because instead of the Minister allowing the administration of those special settlements to vest in the department specially fitted to look after them from their inception - the department of the Commissioner of Crown Lands and Land Board — they are initiated in a department which knows nothing about the intricacies of land settlement, and after they have made a mess of the whole concern, the settlements have been handed over to the Land Board and Commissioner to administer. . The Minister says: as a reason for the extensive forfeitures, that » large number of settlers have not signed their leases. What did he expect when all he asked from those settlers in the first case was 10s as a guarnatee that they were eoing to settle on the land ? I do not think the interests of the large number of the settlers which are now vested in the Land Boards of the colony can be so well served under a system of nominated Land Boards — the members of which may be under the thumb of the Minister of the day— as well as if they were controlled by elective Land Boards responsible to the whole people for the administration of the Crown lands of the flolony. -