LAND AND LOANS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 269, 13 November 1928, Page 6

LAND AND LOANS.

Candidates of the Reform Party and Reform newspapers have wasted much breath and much ink in an attack on the proposal that we should, after all these years of neglect of the country's vital interests, have again a land settlement policy worthy of the name. The proposal to arrange for the borrowing of a sum of £70,000,000, to be expended over a period of years (including a sum to finish railways) is a statesmanlike attempt to put such a policy on a sound basis. It would at once regulate the extent of our possibilities of promoting closer settlement and fix the amount of financial responsibility. In this it would differ radically from the methods of Reform, which in the post-war years has borrowed annually very large sums, with no proper programme for expenditure over a lengthened period. The Hon. W. Downie Stewart, Minister of Finance in the present Government, criticising the borrowing proposals in a speech at Invercargill last night, said that Sir Joseph Ward had failed to prove that the money could be borrowed and loaned without loss. He did not talk the sort of piffle that has been circulated about having £20,000,000 left in thirty years , time to meet maturing bonds amounting to £60,000,000. The suggestion made by the "Herald, ,, that so experienced a financier as Sir Joseph, who was the originator of advances to settlers finance, would so break with established policy, is too ridiculous. Even hard-shelled Reform voters will not swallow such a gross absurdity. Mr. Downie Stewart recognises that the money would be lent under a proper system of amortisation. The amount to be borrowed for this purpose has been suggested, but the details of charges are in a measure tentative and dependent on costs. There would be no loss any more than there was under the vigorous lands for settlement policy of the Liberal Governments* of Seddon and Ward; but the small farmer would again have provided for him the cheapest money i obtainable in the world's markets, and instead of the steady drift from the country and rural occupation the tide would turn and the land would again provide a profitable opening for tens of thousands. The whole future prosperity of this Dominion, the city equally with the country, is wrapped up in an active land settlement policy, but when such a policy is promulgated what do we get from the Government and its supporters? A lot of muddled criticism of figures. It is what might have been expected from a crowd that has openly declared that existing conditions make a land settlement policy not practical at the*present time. Let the elector pause before he casts his vote for a supporter of such a party. Three more years of a policy of negation would bring in its train immense unemployment and a serious exodus of the population of the Dominion.