RE-AGGREGATION OF LAND

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 89, 22 April 1913, Page 5

RE-AGGREGATION OF LAND

NOT TO ANY GREAT EXTENT

DEPARTMENTAL REPORT

Wellington, April 22. The Prime Minister states that a report has come to hand from the Lands Department, showing that there las been aggregation to some extent, mt not as the result of last year’s Land Act, and that in the districts vvhere aggregation was supposed tc nave taken place, there have been no mch cases since the present Government took office.

ONLY RUMOUR AFTER ALL. Later. Of the Mangaweka district, the Land Commissioner in his report tc the Pi’emier says: “As all the land near Mangaweka was alienated before 1900, there is no power in the law to check aggregation in that locality, and there were only three cases of any importance affecting areas from nil acres to 4123 acres. He also found nine people of the same name in one locality holding an area, but they belonged to four different families, not related to oxxe another. Other cases that had been mentioned were admittedly oxxly sufficient to make comfortable living from, and were occupied by. bona fide set tlers. Only a limit ten acres in the vici/xity of Mangaweka have been converted into freehold under the 1912 Act, and the Commissioner considered that there was no foundation for the articles pxxblished in the Mangaweka paper. He mentions a case in the Wellington Land District, where two brothers hold 16,190 acres of freehold, but only 096 were bought from the Crown, and nearly the whole of this land was alienated before 1888.

THE PREMIER’S COMMENT. Later. Referring to the Commissioner’s report, Mr Massey said: In many cases settlers were placed on sections of poor land, from which it was impossible to make a living, and tnese men were either allowed, to increase the area, or who sold to others who remained. As to the general question, the Government was against reaggregation so far as Crown Lands were concerned. The Act of last session seems to have been effective, though in some cases a difficulty with regard to financing has cropped up, which will have to be met, but he intended in the next Land Pill to ask Parliament to agree to proposals which he believed would make re-aggregation exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.