THE LAND BILL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 8 October 1913, Page 5

THE LAND BILL.

SECOND BEADING DEBATE.

A VARIETY OF OPINIONS

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Last Night. The debate on the second reading of tho Land Bill was resumed in the House of Representatives this afternoon by Mr Okey, who defended the freehold as a powerful magnet to attach- the people to the land. He commended the liberal provisions of the Bill, wlii«h would greatly facilitate settlement. Mr «J. C. Thomson said the Premier was not always in favour of closer settlement. He quoted Hansard to show that if lie had his way the Lands for Settlement Act would never have become law. His Bill wag now carrying out everything which he had so strongly condemned in 1894.

Mr J # G. Anderson agreed that drastic legislation was necessary to break up big estates. That legislation could only take the shape of a graduated tax, because the bringing ■ .iip of estates could riot go on with, profit. There was not sufficient in the Bill to bring about the subdiviiaioxt! of first-class land. He. strongly deprecated the proposal to dispense with the" residential conditions. Mr R. MacCallum attacked subclause 2 of section 48, which he declared gave the freehold at the original value, which he would vote against. He was an ardent freeholder, but it was not honest to the great bulk of the people of the Dominion to put a purchasing clause in the existing leases. He gave notice of an amendment that no State money be loaned to assist any settlement tenant to acquire the freehold. Mr G. Witty traced the concessions made to settlers by past Liberal Governments. He said that while the names of Rolleston, McKenzie, Seddon and Ward would be handed down as.men who tried to give the settlers a chance in life, that of Massey would go down as one who sold the birthright of the people. The Government had just as much right to give the lessees of private lands the right to acquire the freehold. To • be consistent, the freehold of the ha-, tional endowments should be parted with just as the freehold of settlement lands was being, sold.

Mr G. V: Pearce contended that the policy of the Government .was to settle the country in small 'freehold. Thetendency was for our population to increase in the town and not in the country. Clause 8 would tend, to; check that inequality by getting town boys on the land. The national endowments were in some cases blocking settlement, and to get over that difficulty exchanges would have » to be made; but he admitted that the negotiations would have to be handled with a good deal of caution. The Bill was one of the best ever introduced into the House, and would be approved by the country as a whole. Mr G. Laurenson denied that the country would'endorse the Bill, and challenged the Government to • '.set him in any of the cities on the < >;stion. The blackest page in th: history of New Zealand was that >i ; ' of it when the land of all the ■M'as sold to a few Crown tenants/ He defied the Government to take a referendum on the question as to whether any more of the Crown lands shall be sold or not. He approved of clause 18, but denounced the proposal to give the freehold, at the-'ori-ginal value. It was the very irony of fate that those who had opposed the Land for Settlement Act should now propose not only to continue borrowing for land purchase purposes, but should be actually increasing it. When the people realised what was being done under this Bill, be believed they would condemn it from one end of the country to the other. Sir Walter Buchanan said the giving of the freehold meant that instead of the capital of land belonging to the foreign money-lender, it, belonged to the occupant. The Bill was an extension and an improvement on the existing law, so far as the taking of land for settlement was concerned, but he hoped the Government would declare that the lands first acquired -under > the Compulsory clauses should - be unimproved land. The man who did not ; improye his larfd should be : the first to suffer. ' Mr.G. W. VEiussell said that the duty of providing.land for. settlement; would tax the greatest statesniapship the country could produce. , The Lands Report shoiwed'that only 100,000 acres of first-class land now remained to be dealt with under the or-dinary-law. Under these circumstances,' the Liberal party had been driven to adopt the Lands for Settlement policy. When he heard the con- ■ temptuous terms which the leasehold principle was spoken of by some members of the House, he wondered whether those members really knew what the condition of the country was twenty years ago. He had no objection to the holders of 999 years' leases getting the freehold. They practi-" cally had the freehold .now, andthe moment they acquired the Crown grant they came under the land tax," The Government was not logical in not giving the freehold to the holders of endowments. As a matter of fact there was very little free-hold,laud in the Dominion, as was proved by the fact that out of the 4(),W"M)00 acres, only 16,000,000 were fre-JoM. disparity between't-lie landowners ai-d our population was growing every year, and the question of how to put landless men on the land was as aclte as ever. The Bill did not settle it. The future land policy of the country would go in the direction of replacing the sheep-grower by the dairyman. All our policy should be directed to that end. He looked forward to the time when we would count our dairy factories, not by hundreds, but by thousands: The debate was continued by Messrs Harris and F. H. Smith. Mr Scott said there was plenty of land l'or the young man who was anxious and willing to get on. • Even at the prcsonb prices, he held that he could make a good living. He considered tho Bill was an admirable one! in many respects. He would not say it was perfect, because there were .several things in it which he disagreed with.