NEW LAND THE NEED

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 611, 13 March 1929, Page 10

NEW LAND THE NEED

PROBLEMS OF SETTLEMENT YOUTH AND THE CITY Press Association WELLINGTON, To-day. Under the auspices of the New Zealand Land Settlement and Development League and the Dominion Settlement Association of Wellington, a* conference on land settlement and migration problems was opened today. Air. A. L. Hunt was voted to the chair. In a lengthy speech Air. Hunt urged there should be a vigorous policy of developing and settling new land in the Dominion. He disagreed utterly with the statement frequently made during the past few years, even by responsible Aiinisters of the Crown, that all land worth settling had been taken up.

Air. Hunt also said millions of horse-power wer® running to waste that might be harnessed up privately in addition to the Government hydroelectric undertakings, and could be utilised for manufacturing purposes. There must be something wrong when, in a country of the great latent possibilities of New Zealand, they had a chronic problem and could not absorb British immigrants. After quoting what was being accomplished in Western Australia, Air. Cribble, secretary of the Auckland Land Settlement League, endorsed Air. Hunt’s statement as to the urgent need of an Immigration and Land Settlement Board.

Air. H. G. Dickie, M.P., said he was quite satisfied that any intelligent boy could make money on the land. No amount of higher education would give the boys a bias toward the land. It would give them a bias the other way In his opinion the Arbitration Court was doing more than anything else to divorce the boys from the land. Air. A. W. Chapman (Waikato) said the trouble to-day was that yoring men were coming out from England who could lose the average New Zealand farmer at chemistry, but who knew little about practical farming. All. Dickie said he was strongly in favour of what he termed apprenticing boys to the land. ’‘You can build as ma.ny Massey colleges as you like but you won’t produce farmers," he declared.

~ Corrls:an (Waimate) said that the drift to the towns could only be stopped by making city life less attiactive. When young men could earn 14s a day on relief work in the towns they were not going out into the country to drive a team for £ a a

, fu , rUler discussion the followutlons '"'ere passed: tlle land settlement policy of the future should be confined largely to opening up new lands at present bringing in no revenue. Present effort , addition to Government cuoit, pnvate enterprise be given cludhi" n t C he ra£remen , t and inciuaing the removal of land tax trt clas« r i ak u U r e breakin S in of secondclass lands for the purpose of makinThat aV in lla ,H le f ° r - close settlement eDCf thi r he opinion of this conference, the time has arrived for a na tional movement to place land settle ment on a sound basis. scttleThe conference approved of the policy of tho Minister ol Lducatinn that primary education bo given a mo?™w“oo e „. adiOUrne<l Until *P-