LAND LAWS AMENDMENT BILL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8867, 30 October 1907, Page 5

LAND LAWS AMENDMENT BILL.

BEFORE THE LEGISLATIVE. COUNCIL. DR. FINDLAY DEFENDS SOCIALISM. By Telegraph—Press Association.. WELLINGTON, October 29. In the Legislative Council, this afternoon, the Attorney-General moved the second reading of the Land Laws Amendment Bill. He said : that the land question had divided thepeople of the dominion more than once. The history of our land legislation had been largely a history of failure and mistake. He spoke of the great obstacles which the land reformer had to overcome in the organisation of the landed class and other interests buttressed by wealth and largely supported by the press of this country. The late Mr Rolleston, he said, had been defeated by elements which the Government found itself in conflict with to-day. He recounted what had been attempted by the late Mr John Ballance and the late Sir John McKenzie, and! said the present Government had accomplished more in the way of land legislation than any that had preceded it. Regarding the allegation, of "socialism" levelled at tbe Ministry, he said that in the proper acceptation of the term he was a socialist, and he gloried in it. We were not going to have l-evolutionary socialism in this country, he said, but we would have measures embodying progressive liberalism or whatever else it might be called. We had had socialism in the past, the AttorneyGeneral exclaimed. What did taking lard by compulsory purchase from the large landowners for the benefit of the people amount to? Jt was no use crying out about "socialism." At heart, he held, we were all socialists, and no one need be ashamed of the term. The bill was not an attack on the freehold. The statement was preposterous. The bill before the Council aimed at a fair compromise between two sections and went further in the direction sought by the iate Mr Rolleston and the late Sir John McKenzie than any other measure yet dealt with by the House. The bill might not come up to the expectations of some, but the Government had done its best. The last word had not been spoken on the question. Further strides would have to be made in future, but the Government had set to work determinedly and honestly to do what was in the best interests of the masses of the people in New Zealand.