GOVERNMENT LAND VALUATIONS.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 2 August 1901, Page 4

GOVERNMENT LAND VALUATIONS.

One of the delegates at tho Counties Conference iu Wellington, who has a distinct turn for humour, kept his audience highly amused when tlie question of the system of Government valuations was under discussion. Tho methods followed, wore, he said, an insult to the intelligence of most people. Take his own case, for example. His land had been valued at £23 an acre, while on the other side of the fence his neighbor’s land, which was every bit as good, was valued at £l2 an acre. When he appeared to object, the first question that was asked him was, “Are you an expert ?” “Well,” he had replied, “if forty years’ experience in the cultivation of land, and acquiring a know ledge of what it can produce, is a sufficient qualification for an expert I am one.” “Oh that won’t do at all,” ho was told. Unless he could show that ho had a signboard up stating that he was commission agent, land valuer, and all tho rest of it

he was not an expert. (Laughter). Why some of these so called assessors—with much emphasis on the first syllable—he would not trust with a spade to bury a dead eat —(roars of laughter)—and yet the property-owner had to accept their judgment of land values. The Conference seemed to bo unanimously of the opinion that some radical change in the methods of valuation was required.