GRAZING RUNS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2339, 4 November 1908, Page 6

GRAZING RUNS.

[To THE EniTOß.il

Sir, —I am pleased to see at last some others have taken rup the cudgels on our behalf. So far I have been fighting this Tammany Hall business alone and trying to expose the biggest swindle on the part of the Government that has ever been foisted on the farmers of New Zealand. Mr Barton is doing good work in trying to expose this jobbery, but he is in error when he says (in answer to a question) that Section 209 said that there should be no renewal of the run if the Board < lee filed to cut it up. Clause 209 is as follows, “IF on the determination of any lease, it be determined that a run cither as to the whole or part thereof, as the case may be, ‘shall again be let,’ then a new .lease of the whole or such part, •as the case may be, shall be offered to the existing lessee at least twelve months before the expiration of his lease, at a rent to he ascertained as hereinafter specified.” The Board in the present case have not determined the lease as Mr. Barton says. They have determined to let it again and that is the point I submit where they must first give the refusal to the present lessee, which they are not doing. We quite admit the Board have no power to determine the lease at the end of the first 21 years and sell the freehold of it, but we contend that if “again let” the present lessee must get the first offer. As I pointed out in my letter to the Minister of Lands, Crown Lands Guide, page 24, under heading “Small Grazing Runs,” says, “The lease is for 21 years, with the first offer at the end of that term of a renewal for a second term of 21 years.” I think that should be plain enough, and easily understood even by the- dullest brain. —I am, etc., G. J. BLACK.