THE LAND SCANDAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 180, 1 August 1925, Page 8

THE LAND SCANDAL.

With a strong red score the AuditorGeneral underlines criticisms of the Government's soldier settlement policy. As we pointed out the other day, the fact that no outside body was called in to fix the value of estates bought for soldiers is proof that the owners got from the Government the price they wanted. Now the Auditor-General says that investigation by his Department has "disclosed the fact that a considerable portion of the losses might have been avoided if greater care and precaution had been observed iv the local administration, and if advantage had been taken of. the expert machinery of the Valuation Department when assessing values for the purchase of properties or as a basis on which to make advances." This is pretty serious. The Government has often been criticised for not making more use of the opinion of residents of a district in which land was bought for soldiers. If it had done so it would not have paid such high prices and the taxpayer would have had less to grumble about to-day. Now we know that in some cases the Government did not even use its own Valuation Department. The Auditor-General cites a case in which, against the advice of "the valuer,'' money was lent to a soldier to enable him to buy a farm near a city at £320 an acre. The result, says the Auditor-General, was inevitable, and the country must foot the bill. Some more light should be thrown on this transaction. We presume the valuer was a Government official. The public should have all the facts before it of a transaction in which, contrary to the advice of an expert, the Government was foolish enough to allow a man to buy, with its money, a farm at the ridiculous price of £320 an acre. It might be extremely interesting to have the complete history of this extraordinary affair. The Auditor-General reports that, exclusive of the reductions made by the Revaluation Board, which amount to more than two millions, the losses in connection with soldier settlement of which the Audit Department has been advised "up to the present date" amount to £131,000. Note the "up to the present date." The scandal of the Government's land purchases grows, and no one can say what its ultimate size will be.