SETTLEMENT POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 August 1943, Page 3

SETTLEMENT POLICY

OUTLINED BY MINISTER OF REHABILITATION

UNCOMPROMISING DEFENCE OF LAND SALES BILL.

AS UPHOLDING RIGHTS OF FIGHTING MEN.

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day.

The Minister in Charge of Rehabilitation (Major Skinner) made his first speech in the House since his return from overseas when he-spoke in the debate on the Servicemen’s Settlement and Land Sales Bill in the House of Representatives last night. “The critics who have attacked this Bill have shown that they do not understand the psychology of the men who are doing the fighting and for whose benefit it is,” Major Skinner declared. The criticism which had been offered in the Press and by the Opposition had been from the viewpoint of the property-holder and did not take into account the reactions of the men overseas, he continued. Rehabilitation did not mean paying men a pension, or simply finding them some sort of work. It meant a reconstruction of the affairs of the country under which the men would be given an opportunity to fit into the general plan and earn a livelihood.

It was grossly unfair for the member for Waipawa and other Opposition members to suggest that in the settlement of men on farms they would be loaded with the costs of subdivision, reading and fencing. The Prime Minister had given a definite assurance in the House that these costs would be borne by the State. Major Skinner said the records of recent land deals showed how the Opposition’s pleas for the sale of land at market values worked out in practice. He quoted cases where houses valued in 1937-38 at £493, £960 and £825, had been sold in recent months at £ll5O, £l6OO and £1250 respectively. The country should not ask those men who were fighting to protect all- properties to throw away their money on such fictitious values.

There had been 32,000 acres purchased by the Government for the settlement of returned men, and there were now available for that purpose 126,728 acres, the Minister went on to observe. The Rehabilitation Board had received 214 applications for loans for settlement on farms and 100 had been granted and the men were now occupying freehold farms. Twenty-eight had been refused because the proposed purchase price asked by the vendor was excessive. Nine were declined for a similar reason and because the proposition was uneconomic, 28 on account of the uneconomic return ' from the proposed venture, and 49 because of general unsuitability. In a number of cases the applicants had been settled on farms, though they had no personal assets beyond farming experience. Recounting instances of excessive prices, Major Skinner said the upward trend of inflated values would continue unless arrested by this Bill. Opposition’ members had suggested that second class, land in the backblocks could be used for settlement, but the Government would not assist any man to ’go on that sort ,of land. “It does not matter what is said by the Opposition and other critics, we will not be swayed one inch from the promises made to the men when they went overseas,” he declared.

The Government, Major Skinner contended, had done more for the rehabilitation of returned men than any other country in the world. In Great Britain a committee had been set up to consider proposals, but its recommendations had not yet been accepted. In America not even a committee had. been set up and nothing had been done. Canada was working along the same lines as New Zealand. The present Bill was an earnest endeavour to carry out the promises made to the men whom he had heard in the desert discussing their prospects when they returned to New Zealand.