NO LAND AND NO LAND POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 251, 22 October 1926, Page 11

NO LAND AND NO LAND POLICY.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—The Hon. Mr. McLeod says we have no land for settlement. "It's all nibbled away," says he. For ignorance of elementary statistics let mc commend our Minister of Lands. Will Mr. McLeod read his Year Book and he will find these facts under the Table of Unimproved but Occupied Land. Flax lands, 39,456 acres; in native grass, 14,739,382 acres; fern, scrub and second growth, 3,953,075 acres; standing virgin bush 4,551,047 acres; unproductive lands only, 1,952,714 acres; total 25,235,674 acres. No land, forsooth! With only 18.417,489 acres used or partially used, and nearly 25,000,000 acres of usable land held blockaded from the people, the great proportion of which is first and second class land! No wonder the "New Zealand. Herald" And the Reform Press are hurling brickbats at him from their editorial chairs. Mr. McLeod is not one wit better or. worse than every other previous Minister of Lands of this land monopolist, no-land-tax party. Is Mr. McLeod not aware that 1096 squatters own approximately 19,000,000 acres of mostly .first-class land out of apopulation of about 1,400,000 people? Can Mr. McLeod, or does he ever read the Year Book? Is he aware that from 1920 to 1923 approximately 2,250,000 acres of grass lands went back to noxious weeds and wilderness and several millions have gone back since? Can Mr. McLeod justify the freeholding at absurd prices of the present 18,120,591 acres of leasehold by his Government, and this, which brings in so large an annual income? Will he justify the freeholding of the Provisional State Forests of 5,619,466 acres when, throughout the whole country, there is a cry for afforestation? Is Mr. McLeod not aware that there are 2,916,439 acres of Crow n lands marked first, second and third class lands ready to be thrown open, which his Government persistently refuses to throw open? Can Mr. McLeod justify repealing land income tax when 2064 squatters, whose, income amounted to £7,000,000. get off. scot free of £221,000 annual tax, and when they only pay a few pounds each of land tax, a mere fleabite? The fact.is that no Minister of Lands who is a squatter himself should ever be selected for that portfolio. Surely the people will wake up to this Ministerial ignorance, and incompetency some day. The national misfortunes are teaching a longsuffering public that it pays to study economics, land taxation and legislation, and not to be the poor benighted creatures, the subjects of the great political hoax played on our broken country last election. —I am, etc., A. HALL SKELTON".