UNOCCUPIED CROWN LANDS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3919, 16 March 1929, Page 3

UNOCCUPIED CROWN LANDS.

STATEMENT BY EX-MINISTER MIcLEOD. In a press interview at Wellington on Thursday Mr. A. D. McLeotd, <ex-Minister for Lands, said: “Much nonsense is spoken and ,published regarding the supposed millions and millions of acres of unoccupied Crown lands ahvaiting development. Outside the lands set aside under Act for special purposes, there now remain less than three million acres of drown lands capable by any stretch of imagination of economic settlement. Of this total, round abon't one-half is still in standing bush of little millable value. It will be well for settlers, as well as for the (State, if these lands in the main are left severely alone until such tiime as we have learned moro pbout them, and how to treat them. The remaining million and a-ha!f acres are composed of fern, scrub, and swamp lands, in hundreds of separate areas, but a 70-mile radius from a point midway between Taupo and Rotorua would enclose, I think, at least one-half of the total million and a half acres. “In conclusion,” said Mr. McLeod, “if the decision had to be made between expending three or four millions of borrowed money in the construction of such a line as the South Island main trunk, which all who should know agree will not pay working expenses, much less interest, and the development of half a million acres at present unoccupied lands, either by railways, roads, or direct subsidy, my voice would go with the latter, ias would the voice of all men who did not place political expediency before the country’s, and its taxpayers’ ultimate benefit.” 1