OUR LAND POLICY

Hokitika Guardian, 31 January 1929, Page 7

OUR LAND POLICY

(Auckland “Star.’)

Tlio Minister of Lands and Agriculture is now in Auckland, and we trust that his visit will eventually prove to have inaugurated a more energetic and statesmanlike land pollicy for the Dominion as a whole and for the North Island in particular. We emphasise the needs of the North 'lsland, and more especially of Auckland. because, as Mr Forbes has already admitted, there is more scope for settlement and a better prospect of its success in various areas of .Auckland district than in any part of New Zealand. Our New Minister of Lands has been closely associated with farmill”; and th.e land question in the South Island for many years, but his prjoected tour, in company with the Minister of Public Works and the Minister of Native Affairs, will cover the whole Dominion, and should supply him with that first-hand knowledge of the country’s needs and possibilities which is indispensable for the successful administration of his ‘mmenseiy important Departments. As an experienced landholder since the days of the Lands for Settlement Act, Mr Forbes has already an ado-* (juate grasp of the principles on which the Liberal land policy has always been based. The destruction of land monopoly, the division of the land into comparatively small holdings, adequate financial assistance for the farmer and settler, and transport facilities, including; above all things good roads —these items constitute the chief articles of the Liberal belief in regard to land. It is nothing but the abandonment of this policy, which justified itself so splendidly under the old Liberal regime, that has caused in recent years a halt in settlement and a comparatively slow development of our natural resources, resulting over a great part of New Zealand in a degree of stagnation deplorable in a young country so richly endowed with the potentialities of wealth and progress.

Last week-end Mr Forbes visited the Kawhia district, and there he had presented to him, by way of objectlesson, a striking illustration of the difficulties that beset “the man on the -land” Yn our back-blocks. Lai go areas of cultivable soil still laud-lock-ed, roads few and far between and in many cases almost impassable, noxious weeds growing unchecked, the dlperviiding problem of native lands and rating—these things are usually an unpleasant revelation to our visitors from'the South, and wo have no doubt that Mr Forbes lias been duly impressed by them. Ou his return to Wellington the Minister is to preside over a conference in which the Commissioners of Crown Lands and members of the Land Purchase Board are to take part, and the personal knowledge that he has gained during his rapid tour of this district should assist him to initiate a new order of things ror our rural population in regard to settlement. reading, and finance, in accordance with the best traditions of the old days of Liberalism.