King Country Chronicle Saturday, June 17, 1911. RATING NATIVE LANDS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 370, 17 June 1911, Page 4

King Country Chronicle Saturday, June 17, 1911. RATING NATIVE LANDS.

The address given by Mr G. Elilott, Vice-president of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, at the annual dinner the other day, went right to the weak spot in the Native Land Rating Act, in a manner which the average man resident in the King Country does not expect from a townsman. He made it clear, to a wider audience than a local paper can ever reach, that until the Native Minister's power to withold consent to seize A native land upon which rates had not I been paid was abolished, the problem m would never be settled to the satisfac- ™ tion of the increasingly large number of pakehas settling in the King Country and other districts where native land predominates. Undeveloped native lands, whether in the hands of native owners or pakeha speculators, are a curse to the community. We wish to see all the land profitably occupied, and yielding returns for the owners,and rates for the local authorities. We have little unoccupied native land in Waitomo County, but there are vast tracts lying in Kawhia, Awakino and Ohura Counties, and these undeveloped districts feel the pinch acutely. Even in Waitomo County there are a number of irritating problems to settle. On the Waitomo Caves road from Hangatiki there are only three or four European settlers, and to expect them to bear the brunt of that mis-named highway's metalling while the native ownerß who benefit by the improvements effected escape scot free, is to expect more than ordinary humanity can suffer. The fact is, the average member oc Parliament doeß not understand the. difficulties our settlers suffer under. If a white man be poor and unfortunate, the Rating Act allows the County or Borough Council to relieve him. Let the final authority for dealing with native owners rest with the same authorities. But Mr Carroll should no longer have the power to prevent justice being done. He has to be consulted and he has never been known to give his consent. Native ownerß won't pay rates, in consequence, and there is no hope of recovering them. We know the member for Taumarunui and the Opposition candidate are both impressed with the necessity for a radical change in the wording of the Rating Act, and we need not say more as affecting them. But we should like to appeal to members of Parliament in other constitutencies to support our representative in his endeavours to compel reform. Large numbers of settlers have come and are coming to the King Country from other parts of the Dominion. They leave provinces or counties where every landowner pays his rates to come to a district where only the European does his share. It is not right. It is not just. It is not logical.