REFORM LAND POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 182, 1 August 1923, Page 8

REFORM LAND POLICY.

(To tie Hdttor.) Sir,—Your correspondent, Mr. Hall Skelton, illuminates a subject which is assiduously kept in almost complete darkness. It ie a fact that little real settlement has ibeen accomplished during the administration of the present regime. After making all due allowance for the intervention of the war. no adequate means -was sought to allay the after consequences, or hold in check the ravaging blight of land-trafficking. Not merely was there nothing done to check this disease, but it was actually encouraged, if not intentionally, at leaet with quite apparent indifference

to the consequences. Heal land settlement is, and has been for years, in a complete state of stagnation. There has been a certain amount of cutting up of estates, tout, thie has been done voluntarily and as a part of the great game of sepeculation. Often it has proved at the coat of the buyer in these subdivisions, men who, having invested their all, have teen ruined. Money which should be spent in trade and development is instead paid in interest on nothing—the outcome of fictitious values. Where can the man turn who honestly wants to be a farmer? To Crown land, or to those vast unoccupied spaces that are already in the maw of land jobbers'—spaces that have been sold for a mere mess of pottage for the only purpose of being sold back in time of dire need at greatly increased prices. To this extremity the present Government and its friends have brought ue, and such are some of the ostensible benefits of free trade in land. Like all gambling, tbe benefits are to the few and the many are impoverished.—l am, etc., B. BRINDLE.

<To the.Editor.* Sir.—The figures of Mr. H. Barker are so obviously incorrect that they require little answering to show that he is trying again to confuse the issue in a manner quite in keeping with the usual Reform propagandist. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing sometimes. My critic, as in my previous letter, does mc the credit of admitting my figures are correct and taken from" official

sources. These figures -were carefully checked by an accountant and an auditor last election, when I gave them. I now repeat 43,546,757 acres are owned and occupied, 25,386,928 of this land are in their virgin state, not producing one penny, and, in passing, my 21 years on a farm enables mc to know flax is not a grass, as my critic stated. His argument that some of this land is used tor grazing is quite contrary to the Government Statistician and on thie point he is merely quibbling. Furthermore, the same Year Book ehcrwg how the 18,000,----"BO acres of improved land is made up approximately Zi million acres is used ior agriculture, 4i million acres for dairying, and lI J million acres for eraz»»g- Therefore it is all moonshine to say the remaining 25,000,000 acres of unimproved J an d is used for grazing, tarrying, m gome cases, a sheep to the acre as my friend suggests. Mr. Barker

or his Reform Club friends will have to study their facts before they can be considered authorities on this question. Again, of the 43,000,000 odd acres only 2,589,599 acres are private leases of varying lengths, and 1,750,805 acres are native leases, mostly for fairly long terms. The remainder is freehold, 0.R.P., and lease in perpetuity, either of the latter tenures are almost as good as freehold. In this respect my critic's arguments are exploded. In dealing with the question of relative taxation Mr. Barker shows his ill-digested figures arc utterly wrong. For instance, he says in 1912 the total taxation was £5,296,590. To be fair he should have added revenue charges, which brought up the amount to f 11,061,161, or £10 16/11 per head of population. Whereas under the Tory Government of 1921 these rose to the huge sum of £34,260,061, or £28 9/10 per head, of which only approximately £8,000,000, or £6 per head can be attributed to war charges. If my critic will work out the relative ratios", which will require a somewhat lengthy set of figures, he will find that land tax and income tax derived from land (a fact which he has not considered) shows approximately on tbe above basis that in 1912 land bore about one-third of the total taxation, but in 1921 it could not even pay one seventh of the total. Regarding non-payment of rates on farm lands it is a notorious fact since hundreds of mortgagees have had their second and third mortgages cut clean out all ov--;r the country and hundreds of mortgagors have not paid their interest for two years at least. Many farmers have walked off theTr rarms or have been sold up and become bankrupt, and some have committed suicide, while hundreds of soldier farmers have walked off their farms and hundreds more cannot keep up their payments. The Government in J desperation have to lower the values of the farms of the latter class. Their farms, recently bought, were acquired at fictitious prices from so-called Reformers, and the people of the country I have to pay in taxation these great re- . ductions which must eventually amount Ito several millions.—l am, etc!. HALL SKELTON.