FARMERS’ UNION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 November 1940, Page 9

FARMERS’ UNION

GOVERNMENT PROMISES NOT ACCEPTED j REGARDING SMALL FARMS BILL. STATEMENT BY MR. O’SHEA. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “I want to say that the union is not satisfied with promises that the administration of the Bill will be such that the powers contained in it will not be fully implemented. We have had one experience of this in regard to standard values, and it was only after a very strong agitation throughout the country that the Minister returned to his undertaking that no one should be compelled to alter his values,” said Mr. A. P. O’Shea, Dominion secretary of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, in presenting a public statement which he had prepared on the instruction of the Dominion president of the union, Mr. W. W. Mulholland, to the monthly meeting of the MakaraHutt Valley provincial executive of the Farmers’ Union yesterday. “There is a further matter in this in which my conscience tells me that I have a duty to perform which is a very unpleasant one, but I am not going to shirk it. I very much regret to say that the Farmers’ Union is of the opinion that the remarks made by Mr. Forbes in the House on Thursday night were completely justified. We are of the opinion that the Minister has not been frank about the provisions which the Bill contains, and it is remarkable that a measure which gives rise to such far-reaching changes in. the law was not fully explained by the Minister, and that it had effects which were concealed. FULL EFFECT NOT DISCLOSED. “Previously where a measure has been introduced which made very radical changes in the existing law, it has been the custom to preface it with an explanatory memorandum. This has not been done with this Bill, and further, the full truth about the Bill’s effect has "not been made known. This point may be emphasised by referring to a remark made by the Minister on Thursday night in the. House, when he said that objections had been raised to the cutting out of the section in the Public Works Act requiring severed land to be taken, and that this severance applied only to areas! no greater than half an acre.

“What the Minister did not say was that the house or the woolshed on the property might be on that half-acre and he did not point out to the House that any land severed could have a very material bearing on a claim for ‘injurious affection,’ the right of claim concerning which is to be cut out by the Bill. “The claim for ‘injurious affection’ is now to be a claim for ‘special loss,’ which term is not defined in the Bill. The definition of ‘special loss’ is to be left to a magistrate selected by the Government, and can never be the subject of definition by a judge of the Supreme Court, while the term ‘injurious affection’ is well known and has been the subject of decisions by the Supreme Court.

LAST RIGHT OF APPEAL. “This again raises the point so ably dealt with by the member for Napier, Mr. Barnard, who took his seat as a private member to raise it; I refer to the ‘invasion of constitutional justice’ in doing away with a constitutional right and privilege in cutting out the appeal to the Supreme Court. The Farmers’ Union has always held that the legislative and the judicial functions of the Government should be kept separate and distinct, and it appears to have the backing of the lawyers on both sides of the House in regard to this. “In this connection it is regrettable also that the opinion of the returned soldiers who went away and fought for the maintenance of our constitutional rights and for our existence in 1914-18 should be unheeded. There is a further point that the Bill makes no provision of any plan for rehabilitation, which is in the opinion of the Farmers’ Union is just as important as any detailed provision for taking land. ' “To return again to the question of the loss of the right to make the Government take severed land even if this applied only to a bare and barren half-acre, it would appear that no protection is too small to take away from the farmer in order to see that he gets the least possible price for his land.

"I would repeat what has been said over and over again on behalf of the Farmers' Union. We will back to the limit any act to make provision for land settlement which is fair to all parties, and I believe that many farmers would be prepared to make land available voluntarily on conditions less than fair to themselves if they knew that it was to be for the benefit of soldiers and not for other people in the community. They would also want to know that the soldier who was figthing for freedom should be given the opportunity of acquiring the freehold if that is his wish.” After hearing the statement, the executive passed a resolution strongly supporting it.