MAORI LEASES.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 138, 11 June 1909, Page 6

MAORI LEASES.

CONDITIONS INEQUITABLE. The almost impossible conditions under which Europeans can obtain leases of •Maori land are explained in current issues of the Gazette. Even admitting that any Government should make possible the support of Maori landlords by European leasehold tenants under any conditiong whatsoever, the present system of granting leases can not be defended.

The New Zealand Gazette of May 20 gives a few examples of excessive values placed on land at Rotorua by the Wairaki District Land Board. Some of the poorest pumice soil is valued at £20 per acre, or at least the rental amounts to o per cent interest on that sum. The sections are not properly roaded, and the only excuse for high valuations 5s 'tfie nearness of the area to the European settlement of Rotorua. But the amount of the rental is not the most iniquitous of the conditions. The terms of the leases are 25 years, with a right of renewal for a further term of 25 years. The tenant is required to bring under cultivation lone-twentieth of his land ever year, until at the end of four years he shall have one-fifth in cultivation, and at the end of six years must have effected permanent improvements to the extent of £1 for every acre of first-class land and 10/ for every acre of second-class land. The Boards, on the other hand, limit the compensation payable by the native owners to a sunt quite inadequate, and if the Maori owners cannot pay compensation, th* tenant practically must go out without it. It would seem that the complaints of the farmer against the locking up of several millions of acres of land for the benefit of an idle Maori aristocrat are not altogether groundless.