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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3731, 13 December 1906, Page 2

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Speatkiug on the Xand Bill a Paekakariki at the banquet tendered to Mr Field, the Premier said he desired emphatically, to make it clear that the Government never proposed at any time to take away from the people in New Zealand their freehold. There were 77 millions of acres of freehold land in the colony, and there was not a line in the Bill which had been.befoae the House to take away ? a foot ot this freehold. There was.; a>. proposal in the Bill to limit.'ithi and the reason for this was to prevent that ruin which had swept in the trail 6! people in England, Ireland and Scotland for years, where huge areas had been turned aside from cultivation .. and were into deer-shooting and fishing pre-

serves. Surely then it was right for every man in the House to try and mould our land legislation in a way ; not injurious to the large land holder, but in a way that would insure the balance available being cut up and placed on offer as a freehold to anybody that wanted it. That, was what was

proposed by the jSovernment. “We may be persuaded to the contrary before we are done,” he added. There were—seven men in this country who owned 300 square miles of land in one district. If Paekakariki had been in the centre of such a district there would have been no settlers in the „ place. He affirmed that under these circumstances those who owned vast areas of land like this should be given the option of selling portion of it at fair prices—that they should not be compelled to lose it qr sell it to the Govern-ment,-but' that ;they should have the right to selfit to anyone they saw fit. As for those who held land under the optional system, at present there was not a line in the Bill which proposed to take their rights, away from them. There, was an agitation that those whoT , held , land under the 999 years’ lease should have the right to acquire it at the original valuation. The value of such lands in the past 20 years had been greatly added to by the expenditure of Public Works money and the industry of. others. He strongly condemned any such proposal, and stated that there were cases where land which had been acquired under the lease in perpetuity system, if put up at auction to-day, would bring full value and in some instances even more. If the Government ■ was not asked to make the ft land legklation of the colony retrospect*; it would be the easiest questial in the world to settle. And what was the difference between the out and out freeholder and the policy outlined in the Government Bill ? There were only some two million acres of Crown lands left, and the whole had been valued at an average of 7s 6d per acre. The Government did not propose tQi||i put its finger on millions of acres in = the country. Unless the opponents of the Bill said legislation was to be retrospective, and that the man holding lease-in -perpetuity land was to We the right of acquiring it at the original value, then the whole trovfble applied to only two million acres of Crown land of poor quality. The Government was desirous of promoting settlement, and he hoped ; a calm and dispassionate conclusion would be arrived at. He—and their representative, too—wanted to do what he thought was right, and they would have, if an apportunity arose, the right of saying through the ballot b6x that their view was in a certain direction. (Applause.) y

Mr Massey, speaking at Papakura, referred to Mr McNab’s alleged connection with a land syndicate. Mr McNab, he said, had had a great deal to say regarding the wickedness of the land syndicates who bought land for speculative purposes. He had told them of one transaction of a syndicate which resulted in a profit of /40,000 v A voice; “It was in Wellington, was it not?” No. That was not in Wellington, but there was a block of land in the Wellington provincial district known as the Makerua Swamp, which formerly belonged to the Manawatu Railway Company. It was partially drained by that company, and had since been acquired by a syndicate. That syndicate had not cut the land up for settlement purposes or improved it in any way, but they were holding it and making enormous profits from the sale of green flax (which grew on the land) to the mills , in the vicinity. It might astonish them, to hear it, but it was a fact that one of the members of that syndicate was Robert, Minister of Lands.- Mr -Massey added, “ I have made a definite statement. If it is not correct I am liable to an action for slander. I challenge Mr McNab to bring an action for slander against me and allow me to prove my statement in the Supreme Court.”- He, tjjjsjiedker, did not say there criminal, or wrong in hplding land in this way, but; as Mr>s£eNab had so much to say regarding the buying of land, for speculative purposes, he might remind him of the saying that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Mr MeNab In Reply. The charge made against, the present Minister ot (the Hon. R. McNab) of having been mixed up in the Makerua Swamp Syndicate was replied to by the Minister in his speech at Balclutha on Friday night. • In the course of his reply the Minister, after explaining the effect the limit for land purchasers would have on land syndicates, mentioned that Mr Massey had made a states

ment in regard to him (Mr McNab) buying land at Makerua, near Wellington. The night after he left Auckland, Mr Massey had referred to Mr McNab’s connection with aland Syndicate, after giving the history of which Mr Massey ■ declared-*-' 4 One of the methbers of .that Syndicate was Mr .McNab, Minister of Dands,” following this with a challenge to bring an action for slander, against him. . "Makerua' swamp,” Said Mr McNab,“was: formerly owned by the Manawatu Railway Company. AbotW-four or five years ago a syn-

« diOkte bought the Makerua swamp " frdta'the Manawatu Railway Company. I believe they paid £2 los an acre for it. but only mention that as hearsay, because I was not In the syndicate nor the railway company. That syndicate disposed of the swamp to a company syndicate, retaining a large number of shares in the company. I don t know what they got for their swamp. They held the property for three and a half or four years —not being connected with it, I > don't know the exact figures—and they sold 4900 acres of the swamp. They raised by way of mortgage a large sum, and expended, I am told, including profits from sales and money realised from mortgage in improving the property and draining the swamp. Afterwards they sold 400° acres to half-a-dozen flaxmillers, because you can’t disposed that land for settlement—you can only use it for flax, because the swamp is flooded by the Manawatu river. Some shares in this company were sold in the open market, and I went into the open market and bought some.” After observing that that constituted his connection with the affair, and remarking that he had been told that the,, syndicate had made a lafge fortunb. Mr McNab added naively—" One of the parts of the fortune that original syndicate made was the money I paid ior my shares.” * Mr McNab continued that he had come in four years after the fortune had been made. Several millers had joined together, and the property had been cut down until only 4500 acres were left, which the company had gone on developing by planting flax, etc. “ That is my relation to the, syndicate that scooped ,£40,000,” added the Minister. "My only single regret is that I did not get into the original syndicate. lam told they scooped a fortune. I was not among them; it has been my One regret that I have been looking on for the last four years. There Is no slander in Mr Massey’s statement. A slander must do harm and damage. Now, Mr Massey has been denouncing the Government ol this country for the last thirteen years or so, and what damage has it done them? The only damage I sustained was through my want of judgment in not getting into the syndicate when perhaps with a little more judgment I could have done so. ; I could then have been in a position to institute litigation against Mr Massey for cases of imaginary slander.”