LAND AND FINANCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 719, 19 July 1929, Page 18

LAND AND FINANCE

STATE MUST AID NEW SETTLERS MR. FORBES’S OPINION * (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter) PARLIAMENT BLDGS, Thurs. The opinion that the Government would have to finance settlers in the initial stages of breaking in undeveloped lands under the scheme of extended settlement was the main point made by the Minister of Lands, the Hon. G. W. Forbes, this evening in his Address-in-Reply speech. As a result of his Dominion-wide investigations, the Minister said, he was convinced that there was a great deal of land still available for settlement. He had been shown what had been done with unimproved lands, and the wonderful results achieved from what had been considered worthless lands, particularly by the application of fertilisers, were very encouraging for further settlement. That class of land, however, was not likely to attract the man with capital. In the past the practice had been to cut up undeveloped lands into sections and, after giving the man the section, ask him for a half year’s rent, and leave it at that. By the time he had built his house and done a little fencing all the money was gone, and he had to borrow. Consequently, many men had had to go off the land, and that accounted for the number of abandoned farms on that class of land. A man had to be assisted with his very necessary improvements in the initial stages. The provision of roading would assist materially in dealing with the deteriorated lands. The Minister said that in some parts of the country he had visited, such as those around Waihi, there were possibilities of settlement, and if men were prepared to go there and deny themselves some of the pleasures and comforts of life, they would succeed as pioneers had done. He was endeavouring to arrange for finance and it would rest with the House whether the policy w r ould be carried out. A good many properties had been offered to the Government, but they had been unsuitable and the price was too high. There were lands that the Government would like to purchase, but where the owner did not look upon it as his duty to offer them to the Government, there was only one way left, and that was compulsory acquisition. In legislation that would he introduced to the House there would be amendments in the method of compulsory acquisition.