PARLIAMENTARY.
HOUSE OF KEPREBENTATIVES.
Wellington, Last night. THE LAND BILL.
Mr Sutton resumed the debate on the Lands Bill. He thought an attempt had been made to unduly force settlement within the last few years, and the deferred payment system had not been a success. It was cruel to induce men without money or experience to go and settle in remote localities. He did not think the arrears due would ever be paid. He approved of the auction system, and did not think those who had bought deferred payment land at a high price had any claim to relief. The restrictions on borrowing would press hardly on the Crown tenants. He warmly approved of making roads to open up lands before sale as the best means of promoting settlement. He made calculations to show'that men of small mean must be ruined who took up land under the proposed leasing clauses. The leaseholders would be sure in a few years to demand relief from Parliament, and if the deferred payment settlers were to be relieved at all then the proposals of the bill were, perhaps, as good as any. He strongly urged putting all native land under the administration of the waste lands boards.
Mr J. W. Thompson said if the deferred payment system had failed it was owing to the auction system. He did not approre of the leasing proposals, as there were too many restrictions and too much uncertainty of tenure. He advocated the disposal of pastoral land in small areas.
Mr Moss expressed disapproval of the bill.
Mr Ivess spoke at considerable length in adverse criticism of the provisions of the bill, especially of the leasing provisions, which were quite uncalled for. He advocated a system of village settlements, and the extension of the Southland system of deferred payments, the ballot being substituted for auction. The bill was quite unsuitable and unworkable. Mr Joyce opposed the bill generally. He was in favor of making the education endowments common property, subject to the ordinary lands law. He was in favor of trying elective land boards. Sir J. Hall thought the bill contained much that was valuable, and much that was unsatisfactory, and which he hoped to see eliminated. He objected on political and economic grounds to the leasing proposals. If a Crown tenancy was created it would be a discontented one, bent on having the leases on freeholds, The tenants would, unless they could do this, have every interest in merely taking as much as they could out of the land and then abandoning it. Nine-tenths of the people in the colony had come here with the hope of obtaining land of their own. The provision as to leasing might be suitable to them, He was sorry to have to criticise any Government measure adversely, and he gave Mr JRolleston credit for the best intentions, but the bill was not a liberal measure, and the leasing proposals were fraught with such great political danger that he hoped the House would not pass them. ______
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Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4224, 15 July 1882, Page 2
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504PARLIAMENTARY. Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4224, 15 July 1882, Page 2
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