THE NATIVE LANDS BILL.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 271, 13 November 1909, Page 4

THE NATIVE LANDS BILL.

The new Native Lands Bill is co elaborate and comprehensive a measure that -we cannot at the present, stage undertake to analyse it in detail; and an opportunity for discussing its leading points will, of course, occur again "when it is debated in the Houses. For the present ■Wβ may be content to point _ out that the bill is intended to facilitate bhe alienation of native lands ■under careful restriction, paying scrupulous regard to the rights and needs of the native owners, establishing adequate safeguards against land speculation or the creation of monopolies, and, at the same time, promoting the longdelayed process of opening up the native lands to European settlement. As the Premier pointed out in his Budget speech, so far as individual owners are concerned, "all existing restrictions and prohibitions against alienation will be removed"; for the native who is the sole owner of a price of land, will be able under the , new Act, by application to the Native Appeal Court, to convert his land into European land, and dispose of it accordingly. Elaborate precautions are taken to ensure the protection of the interests of the Maori in regard to native custom, hereditary succession and communal tenure. Strict limitations axe imposed as to the area of native land that can be secured by any one purchaser or lessee; and, on the whole, the bill seems to be a x-igorous and thoroughgoing attempt to force this interminaible problem to a practicable solution. We do' not claim that it will effect an ideal settlement; but the only people who will have any reason to •Oβ seriously dissatisfied with it are those -who believe in the unrestricted right of the -individual "pakeha" 'to get as much native land as he pleases, and who are constitutionally ima-ble to understand that the Maori has any rights worth considering. Th? bill will no doubt need a good deal of modification in detail; but even as it stands, it is an encouraging proof of the honest determination of Government to cope -with this difficult question in a practical way as speedily as may be consistent wiuh the principles of sound public policy and justice.

Some of the residents of the southern