The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1929 THE LAND PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 39, 15 February 1929, Page 6

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

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1929 THE LAND PROBLEM.

For the cause that lacka assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance. For the future in the distance, Ami the good that we can do.

The Minister of Lands, speaking at Dannevirke this week, made a public statement of considerable interest on land settlement. Mr. Forbes was approached by a local deputation, urging him to promote closer settlement in that district, and his reply, though encouraging, showed that the Minister has a clear conception of the many difficulties that confront him. It goes without saying that the Liberal Government is irrevocably committed to a policy of vigorous land settlement, involving if necessary the compulsory subdivision of large estates. But to enunciate the principle in the abstract is one thing, and to carry it into practical effect is quite another matter; and Mr. Forbes, with nearly forty years' practical experience of farming behind him, is not likely to under-estimate the importance of the distinction between them.

It has been frequently asserted that there is not enough land available in New Zealand for the people who wish to occupy and use it. That is not Mr. Forbes' view of the case. He says, rather paradoxically, that there is only too much land; in other words, he holds that what the country chiefly needs is an increase in its population to take up the land now available and to exploit its natural resources. It is a significant and disquieting fact that, according to the latest returns, the country's population is growing very slowly. Last year'* increase was less than 17,000, falling far below the average annual increase for the past nine years, which has been about 26,000. At the present time the total population of fhe Dominion still falls short of a million and a half, which, in view of the total area of the country and its great potentialities, is a very discouraging figure. Mr. Forbes can see limitless possibilities in the empty spaces of the North Island, which need only proper cultivation to render them immensely productive. But till New Zealand is more densely peopled it is futile to talk as if the principal obstacle to its rapid progress is the actual scarcity of land.

A further consideration is that the utilisation of these relatively waste lands involves much time, labour and capital. When our population numbers many millions all this land will come in process of time to serve highly profitable purposes. But in the meanwhile there is a keen demand for land immediately available for agricultural and pastoral purposes. And there is no doubt a great quantity of such land already broken in and improved, held in large areas within relatively easy reach of markets, ports or towns. This land, especially adapted for closer settlement, is the type to which the Liberal policy of compulsory purchase should, if necessary, be applied. As Mr. Forbes says, there is much sheep land that can be profitably cut up into small dairy farms, and the owners, if unwilling to accept a fair offer for their holdings, must be brought to reason in other ways. While the country still waits for population to take up the large stretches of land now waste and unimproved, the aggregation of great holdings of land well adapted for close settlement is still a serious bar to the Dominion's progress, and we may expect Mr. Forbes and his colleagues to deal vigorously with this problem in accordance with our best Liberal traditions.