MR HOGG ON CLOSER SETTLEMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3045, 16 November 1908, Page 4

MR HOGG ON CLOSER SETTLEMENT.

Speaking at Opaki, on Thursday night, Mr Hogg averred that anyone who said he had done very little to promote close settlement must be either quite unacquainted with what he had must be indulging in deliberate misrepresentation. For our own part, we are quite content to accept Mr Hogg's statement that he has tried hard -and presumably for eighteen years past —to promote closer settlement, but the efforts, we think Mr Hogg will admit, have not been attended with conspicuous success. The gross neglect ot Masterton's interests, at the hands of the Government in respect to close settlement was emphasised by Mr Hogg on the occasion referred to when he read a letter he had written to the Minister for Lands, in which he stated that "The Land for Settlement Board and the Government entirely failed in their duty;" and that "a great permanent wrong had been done to the community." There is no doubt, that a great permanent wrong has been inflicted on Masterton, and the reasons advanced by the Minister tor Lands as an excuse for inaction are simply ridiculously "thin." The reasons are, it also seems, "of a somewhat confidential nature"—but why should there be any secrecy in the matter at all? Surely the Government, or the Minister for Lands, can be absolutely straightforward with the electors of Mastertoa in regard to this close settlement question. It is, also, curious "that the Govern-

ment should be afraid of the Compensation Court" in the Masterton electorate, and yet be prepared to run the risk of an award in the Wairarapa Electorate—a few miles away—and in many other electorates throughout the Dominion. Moreover, not only has Masterton suffered a great permanent wrong in the past, but there does not appear any prospect at the present time of the wrong being rectified as far as possible, except at some very distant date. The whole position is a little peculiar!