THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1907. THAT EXCHANGE QUESTION

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8510, 14 August 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1907. THAT EXCHANGE QUESTION

At the next meeting of the Masterton Trust Lands Trustees we presume that the already much-debated question relating to an exchange of sites between the Trustees and the Government will be discussed again. The decision arrived at on the casting vote of the chairman at the last meeting was in the right direction. At that meeting it was decided to refuse to pay £I,OOO to the Government in order to effect an exchange of sites. It is, perhaps, worth while remarking that several of those who voted for the motion have had many years' experience on the Trust, and are, possibly, more in touch with the true aspect of the question than the more recently-elected trustees. We have on more than one occasion referred somewhat fully to the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the exchange question. Wt) do not intend now to go again into all the details. We regret that the Trustees have not, as a united body, made vigorous efforts to place the true position before the Government, because we believe that if they were to do so they would possibly secure an exchange without any payment by way of equality of value. The Queen Street site is, of course, mere valuable than the site in Hall Street, but that is not the question at all. As we have already pointed out, as a matter of justice—to discharge, in fact, a moral obligation—the Crown should agree to an equal exchange. Apropos of the question of what the Trustees should or should not pay, we would point out that they have no power whatever to pay a single penny

of their revenue away as some of the Trustees propose. The Government are really asking the Trustees to pay £I,OOO towards the erection of a new Courthouse in Masterton. Had any payment been contemplated when tne Empowering Act of 1902 was passed, reference to it would have been made in the Act, and power to make any such payment given. Mr A. W. Hogg, M.H.R., has publicly admitted that no payment was contemplated at the time the Ait was passed, but the reason he gives in connection therewith seems to us to have occurred to him somewhat subsequently.

It is simply absurd to suggest that Parliament contemplated any payment; that it simply passed the Act to allow the Trustees to open negotiations with the Minister for Justice; that it contemplated that a poll of

the voters should be carried in order to enable the Trustees to make arrangements for an exchange; that Parliament contemplated another Enabling Act and another poll of the Voters in order to allow the Trustees to offer a certain sum to the Minister, which the Minister would decline or accept, as he thought fit. If the Enabling Act of 1902 "and fulfilment of

the condition contained therein" are useless, there is, it seems to us, no guarantee that any further Enabling Acts will be of any greater value whatever to the Trustees. To revert to another phase of the question, we agree with Mr Hessev that t.j; erection of the Courthouse in Hall Street will rot enhance the value of the Trustees' property on the opposite side of the street; also, apart from any other phase of the question, it is questionable, in view of the large section the Trustees hold in. Hail Street, whether it is worth their while to pay £I,OOO to the Government to effect the exchange. Then, again, the Trustees have to consider, even if they agreed to pay the £I,OOO, and subsequently got another Enabling Act put through the House,

whether they would be able to secure the sanction of the voters to pay the money. We presume that none of the Trustees proposes that the Trust shall make an extensive purchase of land without first obtaining the approval of the voters. Parliament, everyone will admit, recognised in connection with the exchange proposal that ihe voters had to be consulted.