THE NEVER-NEVER LAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 73, 26 March 1923, Page 8

THE NEVER-NEVER LAND.

MR. MASSEY'S ROADLESS AREAS.

OfR NEGLECTED SETTLERS,

(By Telegraph —Special to "Star.")

TAURANGA, this day.

Massevism is making a strong point in the Tauranga electorate of the "'great things" it has done in the direction of settling returned soldiers and others on the land. In eleven years the Liberals placed a hundred thousand men, women und children on estates, mainly purchased with Government bonds. People in the Tauranga electorate are commenting on the fact that Massevism, instead of breaking in- new country for small settlers, has bought land at prices far beyond its producing value. In going through the electorate Sir Joseph Ward has had representations made to him that certain returned soldiers, after strenuous sen-ice at the front, were piaced on virgin country, which has swamped the whole of their capital. They are now heavily in debt, and are faced with eviction.

At one of his meetings Sir Joseph Ward said he did not consider it was a proper thing to turn returned soldiers off their land. The position must be facid by the country. He believed there won; d have to be a revaluation of land that had been settled by returned soldiers at a price beyond its value. In parts of New Zeaiand the price paid for their land was far too high. Inquiries had elicited the fact that some of the roads to returned soldier-settlers' homesteads were in a deplorable condition, and little better than mountain goat tracks, while in other instances rivers were left unbritlged.

Sir Joseph Ward, commenting on the unnecessary sort of "never-never land" existence in the backblocks, caused entirely by lack of transport facilities, said: "The settler has got to stay there and wither."

A Voice: You are right, Sir Joseph. "Because," added Sir Joseph, "he cannot convert what he produces into money. You might as well put a man on a rock in the middle of the ocean as put him on land with no transport facilities."