LABOUR PARTIES AND LAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2590, 7 June 1923, Page 4

LABOUR PARTIES AND LAND.

THE CRAZE FOR NATIONALISATION.

The N.Z. Labour Party says its principles are the same as those of the British Labour Party. It has to be admitted that both have gone red considerably of recent times. Whether they will each endorse the other’s proposals on specific issues is what we have no means of knowing. On the land question the N.Z. Party has not got much beyond abstract formula and even that they have found rather difficult to explain to the satisfaction of their own supporters. The British Labour Party has put its ideas of land reform or revolution into the form of a Bill —and oh. such a Bill.

LAND NATIONALISATION BILL. “A Bill to provide for the nationalisation of land in Great Britain and the abolition of private property therein.” This Bill has been presented by Mr Snowden, and is supported by, among others, Mr Lansliury, Mr Hodge, and Mr Thomas Johnston. It has been ordered by the House of Commons to be printed and it shows to what length the Socialist demagogues in our midst are prepared to go. The landlords are to be the first who will be expropriated and in a memorandum the objects of the measure are set forth. The first is this:—To abolish private property in land, and to transfer all land in Great Britain which is not already the property of the Crown or any public authority to a newly created Ministry of Lands.

To gild the pill, owners of land are to be compensated: —Compensation to owners will be paid in the form of 5 per cent. National Land Stock redeemable at par after 30 years by the establishment of a sinking fund or by such other means as Parliament may hereafter determine. The amount of stock paid to each owner will be such as will provide an annual income being calculated as the reasonable rent of the land for the purposes for which it is used at the time of the transfer. Differences as to the amount of compensation properly due to owners to be selfled by official arbitration.

But from the memorandum let us turn to the clauses of the Bill. Under the first and subsequent clauses another very expensive Ministry —a Minis! rv of Lands —is lo be created. The new Minister will have “a secretary and such assis-tant-secretaries, officers, and servants of the Ministry as shall be necessary.” Indigent politicians, their relatives and friends will rejoice to hear this. The salaries of these new limbs of the Bureaucracy “shall be. paid out of moneys provided bv Parliament” —i.e, by the taxpayers. It shall be the duty of the Minister . . . to establish an advisory or consultative council for the purpose of giving advice and assistance to him . . . and he shall appoint at least one member ‘from certain specified bodies.’ The work of the Minister will accordingly be carried on in an atmosphere of rhetoric which does not usually conduce to efficiency and economy.

What are the bodies from whom the advisory council is to ho recruited? They are as follows-.—The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Ministry of Health, the Board of - Agriculture for Scotland, the County Councils’ Association, The Municipal Corporations’ Association, the Urban District Councils’ Association, the Rural District Councils’ Association, the. National Chamber op Commerce, the Trade Union Congress, the Co-operative Congress, a Farmers’ Association, a Farm Workers? Association. There is nothing in the Bill defining the number or powers of the Advisory Council, and it is obvious that the Minister of Lands, if he so chose, could appoint an unlimited number or representatives of, say, Hip Trade Union Congress, the Cooperative Congress, or a Farmworkers’ Association, while limiting the National Chamber of Commerce and other bodies each to one representative.

By Clauses 8 and. 9 provision is made, for the ownership of buildings on the land. Those which are not farm-houses or farm-buildings will remain the property of the previous owners, but the farm-houses, etc., will vest in (he Crown and “the Minister shall be at liberty to sell and the tenant or occupier . . . .

shall have the right to purchase” them. The price is to be “settled by agreement or arbitration.” Clause 12 deals with “the case of aioVrenee between the Minister and tiie owner of the transferred land” as to the amount of compensation to he paid for it. “The amount . . .

shall ... be determined by the arbitration of such one of the panel of official arbitrators appointed un-ck-r the provisions of the Acquisition ■of Land Act, 1919, as may be selected by the Ministry of Lands for this purpose.” But what is to be done with the land and farm buildings, etc-., so acquired by the Ministry of Lands? “Subject to such general regulations as shall be prescribed by Parliament and the Minister,” certain local authorities “shall be responsible for the details of the administration of the trust estate in their respective areas.” These bodies are the county councils, urban district councils and rural district councils. They “shall appoint public lands committees” —one-fourth of whose members may be co-opted from persons not on the councils —who will administer the lands.

An English paper comments that “this Bill is so preposterous as to qualify its supporters for residence

at Colney Hatch.” In colonial phraseology we would be disposed to characterise it as “the dizzy limit” and yet that soil of thing is what the craze for Nationalisation leads to. (Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League).