“Tighten Up” on Soldier Settlement

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 116, 6 August 1927, Page 9

“Tighten Up” on Soldier Settlement

FAILURES AND SUCCESSES MINISTER STATES POLICY (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Friday. “THERE is only one possible way, and that is to tighten up and tighten up hard,” declared the Minister of Lands, the Hon. A. D. McLeod, in the House to-day, when referring to the difficulties which have faced the Government in the settlement of soldier settlers’ problems. Many of the men, he said, had not been cut out for farming, and although they had tried and tried hard, their holdings were a failure. The sympathy that had been given to these men had a most demoralising effect upon others, who were not inclined to pay their rents. The discussion was upon the Minister’s motion to table the report on discharged soldiers’ settlement. Mr. H. L. Tapley, Dunedin North, said that if each individual case of soldier settlers could not be treated on its merits by an expert valuer, some other avenue of employment should be found for them. The House was informed by Mr. T. W. Rhodes that the soldier settlers in his district were eating their hearts out in a vain endeavour to make good on land infected with almost uncontrollable weeds. DEBT TO SOLDIERS Mr. O. M. Samuel said that although the debt to returned soldiers was becoming smaller, until it was quite repaid every member in the House was responsible for its liquidation. The problem was still surrounded by many difficulties, said the Minister in reply, although every soldier realised that the administration had been

most sympathetic. Fifty per cent, of those who had taken up land since returning from the war had not applied for relief —of something over 11,000 soldier settlers, only 560 had applied for assistance, in spite of the straitened circumstances in which the farming community had been placed during the dark years of the slump. DEMORALISING EFFECTS

There was the greatest demoralisation it was possible to imagine among the first-class men on account of personal equation. Many men, although triers, were simply not fitted to go on the land, and their farms had been worked at a loss, and these had a demoralising effect upon the rest to whom assistance was given. As Minister of Lands he personally hesitated before he applied the seal to a deed of forfeiture, and turned a man from his home. The Minister denied that any men had been compelled to walk off their farms as the result of the action of the Crown. This side had been watched very carefully, and several stipulations had to be complied with before a mortgagee could foreclose on soldier settlers. Some of the men had adopted an unreasonable attitude when the suggestion was made that they be shifted, refusing to be shifted without payment of compensation. To this the Minister would not agree, for it was impossible for a big department of State to establish a practice of this sort. The Government was willing to shift a man off his place on to a better one in certain circumstances, and give him a fresh start, but there was no call for compensation.

There were many farms which had returned to the hands of the Crown, but the Minister felt convinced that when things became a little brighter these would again be occupied. On the average the soldier settler throughout New Zealand was paying rent on a lower basis than was his freehold neighbour, and the bulk of the soldier settlers realised that the Government was doing all possible for them.