LIMIT PROPOSED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 August 1943, Page 3

LIMIT PROPOSED

ON OPERATION OF BILL WAR PERIOD PLUS FIVE YEARS MINISTER WARMLY DEFENDS HIS POLICY. DETERMINATION to protect RETURNING MEN. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The intention of the Government to add a clause to the Servicemen’s Settlement and Land Sales Bill to restrict its application to the duration of the war and for five years afterward was announced by the • Minister of Lands, Mr Barclay, in moving the second reading in the House of Representatives last night. He also stated that several other amendments would be moved when the measure was in committee stages. 1 Mr Barclay said' it was considered that the majority of the returned service men seeking to be settled on the land would be satisfactorily established within five years of the war ending. It had also been decided to add a clause to Part I of the Bill relating to the setting up of a Land Sales Court to provide that the judge of the court must be a party to its decisions. To clarify the various interpretations placed on Clause 23 the Government was prepared if necessary, so to amend it to make it clear that the taking of land applied only to farm lands. The Minister said he did not think it was necessary to make that amendment as it was clearly intended to apply the compulsory powers taken under the Bill to farming land. He said representations had been made by the New Zealand Law Society about the publication of proceedings tjefore the court or the committees, and a clause would be inserted confining the publication to the price of the land only. The society had agreed that the price should be published. In reply to an interjection by Mr Forbes (Opposition, Hurunui) the Minister said the powers of compulsory acquisition under the Bill were never intended to apply to houses or urban land.

In reply to Sir Apirana Ngata the Minister said the Bill would not apply to Native lands, unless these had been alienated. The Minister said his statement that several organisations had asked for the Bill was b'orne out by the evidence he possessed. He quoted from resolutions adopted by the Dominion executive of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union and the South Canterbury Provincial Union and remits adopted’b/ the New Zealand Returned Services’ Association. “This association which we have consulted is 95 per cent with the Government in the provisions of the Bill and we differ only in regard to the question of the freehold,” continued the Minister. EXPERIENCE RECALLED. Quoting his own experience as a returned man of the Great War, the Minister said ’he sold his farm on enlisting at £25 an acre and when he came back' the man who had bought it refused £4O an acre for it. “I am going to see that the returned’ men of this war are not going to be sucked as I and others were,” he added. He said there would be thousands of men returning looking for land and perhaps 50 per cent of them would buy land privately. “We are not going to allow land values to rise against these men and we have to peg prices to protect them. We are on the verge of a land boom similar to that after the last war, in the towns at present more so than in the country. Perhaps we should have pegged the values earlier. We should have the whole country behind us in seeking to ensure than the 150,000 men who have entered the armed forces shall not come back to find that house and land values have been increased beyond reason.” ASSISTANCE WANTED. The Minister said he wanted the assistance of the Opposition to see the Bill on its way. Referring to Mr Forbes’s work for land settlement the v Minister said: “What about going out *> of Parliament in a blaze of glory with your radical sentiments nailed to the mast,” after mentioning Mr Forbes’s intention to retire from politics. The experience' of settling men on the land after the last war should be a guide for the country today, continued Mr Barclay. He said the total losses incurred by the State after 1918 had amounted to £9,685,000. He believed the Bill would do the fair thing by the owners of land. In fact, he considered the compensation procedure would ensure generous treatment. Speakng with some warmth, the Minister said that he would rather go cut of office than permit the returning men to be settled on land at inflated values, and he would not be a party to putting them on back-country blocks. “I am going to see that the returned men will get good land on good roads with electricity and all modern conveniences,” he continued. Instancing the rise in values, he cited a case in which a farm had been mortgaged at £24 an acre. Under the Mortgage Rehabilitation Act the mortgage had been written down to £l2 an acre and only the other day this land had been sold at £lB an acre. The mortgagee had lost £1447 as a result of that.

In concluding, the Minister said that those criticising the Bill had not brought forward or even suggested any alternatives to its proposals for the stabilisation of land values and the settlement of returned men at fair values.