HAURAKI RATES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 309, 21 March 1928, Page 14

HAURAKI RATES

THIRD TO BE WRITTEN OFF IMPROVEMENTS JUSTIFIED (SUN'S Special Reporter.) WAIUKU, To-day. “Not less than one-third of the rates of some of the land in the Hauraki Swamp will have to be written into 1 the public debt of this country.” declared the Minister of Lands, the Hon. A. D. McLeod, while speaking at Waiuku last evening, and advancing a word of justification for the plan of development and improvement that has been undertaken in that district. “In spite of this burden on the general taxpayer,” the Minister went on, “I do not think anyone will say that the Hauraki swamp area has been a failure. The land, it has been found, will not carry the full interest charges on the development work, but there are 2,500 people now living on an area which 20 years ago was a wilderness, and which now is yielding butter-fat and other produce to the value of nearly a million sterling. “Yet, if the full interest charges were loaded on to these people, they would have no more chance of paying it than they would have of jumping to the sun. “I could rush forward with schemes for the development of the gumlands of the North, run the Government into millions, and then pass off the scene, and leave a legacy for those who come after me. But I will not do that, because it would only place things in a position worse than that in which we find ourselves now.”