LAND FOR SOLDIERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1943, Page 3

LAND FOR SOLDIERS

MR SEMPLE ON PENDING LEGISLATION SAYS SPECULATORS ARE AFTER BLOOD MONEY. DETERMINATION NOT TO PAY INFLATED PRICES. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. _ “A Bill will be introduced in this House shortly to make provision that land shall be sold only at its productive value together with a reasonable allowance for improvements,” said the Minister of Works, Mr Semple, in the course of a speech in the Budget debate in the House of Representatives last evening. He was replying to Opposition criticism alleging Government inaction in settling returning service men on the land. The Minister said the Government was determined that the land speculator and jobber would get nothing out of the present war. The mistakes in soldier settlement which cost the country millions after the last war and resulted in hundreds of returned men walking off the land would not be repeated. “The same gang of speculators is after the same blood money as they were after the last war,” said the Minister, “and the Government is going to prevent it this time. That is the reason why we cannot settle these men on the land at this stage. Nobody can say what the value of our produce will be after the war is won. and it would be madness to saddle soldier settlers with land at inflated values forced up by speculators beyond its productive value. When the Bill comes before the House we will seek the Opposition’s co-operation in putting it through.”