THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 1909. THE SETTLEMENT PROBLEM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3198, 26 May 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 1909. THE SETTLEMENT PROBLEM.

The drifting of New Zealand farmers, with experience and capital, to Queensland, is a most serious indictment of the settlement policy of the Ward Administration. If all our fertile lands were occupied there would be excuse for such an exodus, but with many millions of acres lying absolutely idle, it is most reprehenthat any settler should be driven out of the Dominion by "the deliberate locking up of unused and unoccupied land. Mr R. McKenzie, who is by no means prejudiced in favour of Auckland Province, says that "between Wai-hi [and Motu, through which I have just passed, you could put half a million settlers to-morrow." Yet while the Minister for Works is discovering the magnificent opportunities waiting development in the Auckland Province, good men and true are leaving New Zealand for the Darling Downs. The difference between the settlement policies of Queensland and Canada and of New Zealand is. obvious. While our Government allow millions of acres of Native land, the milk of the country, to be tabooed to permanent pakeha settlement, and neglects to build railways which would open up the immense undeveloped regions of the North, the Queensland and Canadian authorities are advertising their resources far and wide, and doing all in their power to make their countries attractive to desirable settlers. Bishop Selwyn, in 1855, says the Auckland "Herald," declared himself in favour of indi-. vidualising Maori ownership and endowing the Native people with all the rights and responsibilities of the pakeha. He announced himself opposed to any solution of the Native question which would be unjust to European settlers. If the spirit of Selwyn animated our legislation we should not have European settlers heavily taxed and rated to increase the values o* locked up Native lands, nor should we have New Zealanders forced to emigi'ate because the back country is choked with vast blocks which the Native owners can neither use nor sell.