The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1929. OUR LAND POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 18, 22 January 1929, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1929. OUR LAND POLICY.

For the oaus* that Iqcks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, t"or the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

The Minister of Lands and Agriculture is now in Auckland, and we trust that his visit will eventually prove to have inaugurated a more energetic and statesmanlike land policy for the Dominion as a whole and for the North Island in particular. We emphasise the needs of the North Island, and more especially of Auckland, because, as Mr. Forbes has already admitted, there is more scope for settlement and a better prospect of its success in various areas of Auckland district than in any other part of New Zealand. Our new Minister of Lands has been closely associated with farming and the land question in the South Island for many years, but his projected tour, in company with the Minister of Public Works and the Minister of Native Affairs, will cover the whole Dominion, and should supply him with that first-hand knowledge country's needs and possibilities which is indispensable for the successful administration of his immensely important Departments.

As an experienced landholder since the days of the Lands for Settlement Act, Mr. Forbes has already an adequate grasp of the principles on Vrhieh the Liberal land policy has always been based. The destruction of land monopoly, the division of the land into comparatively small holdings, adequate financial assistance for the farmer and settler, and transport facilities, including above all things good roads —these items constitute the chief articles of the Liberal belief in regard to land. It is nothing but the abandonment of this policy, which justified itself so splendidly under the old Liberal regime, that has caused in recent years a halt in settlement and a comparatively slow development of our natural resources, resulting over a great .part of New Zealand in a degree of stagnation deplorable in a young country so richly endowed with the potentialities of wealth and progress.

Last week-end Mr. Forbes visited the Kawhia district, and there he had presented to him, by way of object-lesson, a striking illustration of the difficulties that beset "the man on the land*' in our back-blocks. Large areas of cultivable soil still land-locked, roads few and far between and in many cases almost impassable, noxious weeds growing unchecked, the all-pervading problem of native lands and rating—these things are usually an unpleasant revelation to our visitors from the South, and we have no doubt that Mr. Forbes has been duly impressed by them. On his return to Wellington the Minister is to preside over a conference in which the Commissioners of Crown Lands and members of the Land Purchase Board are to take part, and the personal knowledge that he has gained during his rapid tour of this district should assist him to initiate a new order of things for our rural population in regard to settlement, roading, and finance, in accordance with the best traditions of the old days of Liberalism.