SOLDIER SETTLERS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 83, 4 October 1924, Page 6

SOLDIER SETTLERS

DEMANDS FOR PAYMENT.

Demands sent out to returned soldier settlers were referred to by Mr. G. M'Kay. (Hawkes Bay) in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon. Mr. M'Kay asked whether the Minister of Lands approved of Commissioners of Crown Lands sending out notices to settlers with the intimation that unless, certain conditions were complied with they "would be compelled to take such action as will probably deprive you of your holdings." - Settlers on the Kaiwaka and Beatty Estates in Hawkes Bay had received such notices before the reports of. the Revaluation Committee had • been made known to themen.

The Hon. A. D. M'Leod replied that he had .gone carefully into this matter, because he realised that there was a good deal of dissatisfactionv existing among returned soldier* in regard to the demands which had been made upon them by the Department. . He was rather afraid, however, thatjJie trouble hiy entirely with the soldiers themselves. The Lands Department was responsible to the Treasury for the public finance which it handled, and, irrespective of the Revaluation Committees having dealt with the sections or not, the necessary notices under the law were required to go out \o every settler at the end of the half-yearly period. To keep the books of the. Department approximately square and up to date there must ba some reply from the soldiers as.to what they intended to do in the matter of making payments. Any sum in reduction of arrears, however small, was accepted as an indication- that the settler was endeavouring to meet his liabilities. No district committee, but only tlie Dominion Revaluation Board; "had the power to say that a settler's rent was to be remitted. If settlers would only heed the notices and say whether or not they could meet their payments, he was quite sure that generous treatment would be accorded them in every case.