THE PUTARURU PRESS. Phone 28 P.O. Box 44 Office Oxford Place THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 1929. MORE PROMISES.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 292, 13 June 1929, Page 4

THE PUTARURU PRESS. Phone 28 P.O. Box 44 Office Oxford Place THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 1929. MORE PROMISES.

ONCE again a Cabinet Minister, this time no less a light than the Prime Minister (Right Hon. Sir Joseph Ward) has been in the vicinity of Putaruru, and promises of interest; to the district have again been made. Sir Joseph dealt exhaustively with railways, but the question that concerns our district is land settlement, and the Prime Minister touched on this point. In proclaiming the gospel of buying land to settle people thereon Sir Joseph referred with pride to the fact that a number of estates had been purchased for cutting-up purposes. This is all very well, and no objection can be taken thereto if the land is purchased at a price that will enable the occupiers to gain a fair return for the outlay of their capital, but in the vicinity j of Putaruru there are thousands of acres of land that only requires to i be broken in that is equal to much > of the dearer class of land. This could be brought into heart at a far cheaper rate than some of the lands purchased by the Government for cutting-up purposes. It would pay the Government and the country to give this land to bona-fide settlers with due safeguards for the future rather than see it in its present state. •

The Minister of Lands has seen what it is capable of doing, and the Government’s inactivity is astounding, especially in view of the promises of the Government as to an aggressive land-settlement policy. The late Government owed its defeat to many reasons, the chief of which were its failure to deal with the unemployment problem and its lack of a land policy, or rather its failure to put it into effective operation. Great things were expected from the present party in power, seeing that Sir Joseph Ward is a link between men like Ball-wee, Seddon and McKenzie, who did much to effect the settling of men on the land, and Sir Joseph, in the course of his speech at Rotorua, proudly linked his name to these great Liberals. To date the United Party has been as disappointing in performances as its predecessors, and unless it does more in the immediate future its fate will be similar to that of Mr. Coates’ Administration. Deeds, not words, sire wanted, especially in dealing with some of the Putaruru problems that await the promised solution.