Other Places as Bad as Ngaroma

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 95, 13 July 1927, Page 16

Other Places as Bad as Ngaroma

MR. HOCKLY’S COMMENT SETTLERS WHO CARRY ON (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter .) WELLINGTON, Monday. “Is Ngaroma the only bush-sick place in the country? Are there not other places in a state just as bad as if not worse than Ngaroma?” asked Mr. J. F. Hockly, Rotorua, in the House of Representatives this evening when speaking upon the general question of bush-sick land, and recounting his personal experience of 46 years on the land. “Why,” he added, “I represent the largest area of stock-sick country in the North Island. Why is it that those who have stood up in this House and championed the men at Ngaroma have said nothing of those who are facing the same conditions, and who are left to sink or swim so far as members of this House are concerned? Nearly a million acres of bush-sick land lay between Manukau and the East Coast, and he asked why these men received no sympathy. Some of them had faced troubles for 20 years and were now willing to carry on. Bush-sickness was the most baffling problem that he had ever faced, and a period on new country was the only thing to improve stock. If, however, the Ngaroma settlers were to be put on new lands then he would claim that the settlers on the million acres he had referred to should also be put on fresh lands. To ask the Government to put the settlers on a million acres of bush-sick lands on to other lands was, however, an impossibility.