R.S.A.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 June 1922, Page 5

R.S.A.

DOMINION COUNCIL. REPORT OF LAND COMMITTEE. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, June 10. At the meeting of the Dominion Council of the New Zealand Returned Soldiers’ Association the report of the land committee recommended that as soldier settlers have undertaken obligations to the country and are now asking concessions, it is therefore considered a first and guarding principle that every soldier settler is morally bound to make an earnest endeavor to carry out those obligations to the very best of hia ability so that the highest confidence may exist between the soldier settler as tenant and his common landlord, the Crown; and that the Government be urged to deal with questions of the Discharged Soldiers Settlement Act and its administration during the following session. The committee affirmed the general principle of revaluation. Some means should be devised to remove present difficulties and remove the atmosphere of uncertainty and insecurity until revaluation takes place. All rentals and interest charges should be reviewed immediately, so as to give the soldier settler a reasonable chance of retaining his holding, and that for this purpose a committee of three competent farmers *in each land district put such policy into operation. Soldier settlers should not be asked to pay rates on higher values than adjoining owners on similar lands. General Russell said the only question they had to consider at the present time in this country which was of 1 outstanding importance was the question of primary production. He did not think the association could look forward to a very much longer lease of life unless it could produce a practical solution of the land question as it affected returned soldiers. They had first to put them in a position in which they could live. Many of them were not, as a matter of fact, according to statements made, in a position to pay their grocers’ bills. The first solution lay in revaluation of their land so that rents could be adjusted. The second was of considering some practical means of enabling more, especially dairy farmers, to improve their stock and thereby improve their produce. Denmark had done this, increasing the production on the same acre of land by between 200 -and 300 per cent., and had thus become a comparatively prosperous state.