WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 112, 14 May 1929, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

PRIME MASTER'S TOUR. TARANAKFS PROSPERITY. LAND LEGISLATION PROSPECTS. (By Telegraph.—Special to " Star.") WELLINGTON, May 13. Sir Joseph Ward returned from his Taranaki tour on Friday morning and after attending to pressing business forthwith, was in his office early on Saturday to dispose of routine work and receive half a dozen In the evening he left by ferry steamer to keep a number of engagements in the South Island and expects to lie back in Wellington on Saturday next. During his Taranaki-llawke's Bay tour, extending over some 15,00 miles by rail and car, h.: '.: , .lked, so one of his travelling companions declares, between four and five hours a day and listened attentively for almost as long. Sir Joseph expresses himself as delighted with his" tour. He did not start out with any party or political intentions, he ?aid in the course of a hurried chat on Saturday afternoon; but he felt that lie should make himself better acquainted than he had been of late with the central part of the North Island and he was more than pleased with what lie had seen and learned during his excursion. Sir Joseph had not travelled through the Taranaki district at all thoroughly for some years previous to his trip last week, and he was astounded, he said, to see on every side the progress the province had made in the last fifteen or sixteen years. The whole face of the country had been changed by the courage and enterprise of its people and one would judge, without statistics, that its output of produce had been enormously increased in the interval. It was not only the rural districts and their increasing outputs that marked this change. The centres of population everywhere, testified to the energy and taste of their people. New Plymouth had doubled its population in a very few years, and looked to be preparing for the influx of another twenty thousand in the near future. The gratifying development of the whole province was due in a large measure,- no doubt, to the very cordial relations that existed between the rural and urban people. Hawke's Bay Sir Joseph had visited more recently, but here too, he found many marks of substantial progress. Compulsory Acquisition. \ The "Evening Post" is predicting that the Prime Minister and his Minister of Lands, the Hon. G. W. Forbes, will have a difficult task in piloting their foreshadowed Land Bill through the new Parliament. "In a two party House," it reminds the two Ministers (and the public, "Messrs. Seddon and (McKenzie had no small difficulty in piloting through their policy Bills, and it becomes an interesting speculation how a minority Government in a threeparty House will run the gauntlet with a measure for compulsory land acquisition, in its way as contentious as a Licensing Bill. Apparently the Government will have to go through Committee on stilts, resting one moment on the Labour leg, then on the Reform leg. A percentages provision as above would probably be retainable only by Reform support, and the same could be said of some other provisions of the Land for Settlements Act if they were copied into the new Bill." All these lions may lie in their path, but at the moment the Ministers are not contemplating them with alarm. "Most Confident of Parties." The truth is that just now the United Party is the most confident of the three sections of the House. Sir Joseph Ward and his colleagues are not boasting over much nor are they expecting to obtain from the new Parliament all they could wish; but they have up their sleeve the, right of an appeal to the country, and if necessary, the courage to--exercise it. The Reform Party and the Lrfbour Party are so far apart that it is inconceivable that they would join forces for the purpose of defeating the United Party. If the inconceivable happened it would be tantariiount to asking for a dissolution with the United Party still in charge of the affairs of the Dominion. Neither Reform nor Labour would have anything to gain from such a development which probably would bring back the United Party with a majority of the House at its back. The defeat of the Government's Land Bill—presuming it were framed upon such lines as the Prime Minister has suggested —might prove the best thing that could happen to the Party. ! __=