FARMERS IN POLITICS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 491, 22 October 1928, Page 12

FARMERS IN POLITICS

MR. POISON ANSWERS MINISTER OF LAND DECREASE IN SETTLEMENT Press Association STRATFORD, Sunday. In the course of an election address yesterday, Mr. W. J. Poison, Independent candidate for Stratford, said that in spite of the unanimous repudiation of the Dominion executive of the Farmers’ Union and the indignant denial of the Auckland Country Party itself, the Minister of Lands, the Hon. A. D. McLeod, was still inferring that the Farmers’ Union was being made use of financially for political purposes. Mr. McLeod took the ground thar any critic of the Government was decrying the credit of the country, and he proceeded to camouflage the issue with misleading figures. Mr. Poison said he declined to subscribe to that. He was not alone in attacking the Government’s land policy. He contrasted the Government’s attitude to the land question with Its extravagance in railway and hydro-electric construction works, and criticised the proposed Rotorua-Taupo railway line. In regard to Mr- McLeod's assertion that the area of deteriorated land was not increasing, the speaker quoted an article which estimated that an area of 5,000.000 acres had gone back into second growth. He said the Year Book figures when analysed largely bore out this assertion, and Indicated that scrub and fern was increasing at the rate of 100,000 acres a year. In a country 95 per cent, of wnose exports were primary, increased land settlement was essential. In this respect the Government bad signally failed to carry out its last election pledge more closely, to settle both unoccupied and occupied lands by purchase and subdivision.