“THE TIME IS NOT RIPE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 156, 22 September 1927, Page 10

“THE TIME IS NOT RIPE ”

IT will come as welcome news to many people to learn that the Government has a land policy. The Minister of Lands, in his address at Waiuku, “stoutly defended the Government’s land policy,” says a report. You cannot make a stout defence of nothing; therefore there must have been a policy hidden somewhere all along. Mr. McLeod brought it out into the open at Waiuku. This was it:

“No purpose could be served by encouraging more people to go on the land until the position of those already there was improved. When that had been done, it would be time to cast around for a new policy.”

There is a policy. Admittedly it is old and fusty and rusty ; and while it has been hiding in the jungle of unsettled areas during the regime of the present Government, 9,000 settlers, unable to make a “do” of it, have walked off the land, according to Mr. Lee Martin, the Labour candidate for Raglan. No wonder such a policy retreated into the darkness in an endeavour to be forgotten. Mr. McLeod expressed the opinion that had butter-fat been worth 2s a lb., some of the mortgaged farmers would have had to give up. And why? Because they bought land at prices tremendously beyond its productive value. And these fictitious prices were brought about by the Government’s paying preposterous sums for land for soldier settlement in the first instance. For three years now the Government has been resuming possession of financially-burdened farms abandoned by settlers and has been writing down values. It has by no means done with the task. There were 1,720 applications for revaluation last season. Of these only 816 have been dealt with so far, but they have ~ involved the writing off of £237,000 in capital value and £43,765 in rent and interest!

In the dim future, when the present decrepit and palsied policy dies an unlamented death, the Minister will “cast about” for a new land policy. The country will wish him good fishing. Meanwhile, let Mr. McLeod speak again: “No purpose can be served by encouraging more men to go on the land until the position of those already there has improved.” As a statement of sheer administrative incapacity in dealing with the question of the country’s greatest need it could not be improved upon.