LAND TENURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 224, 22 September 1938, Page 13

LAND TENURE.

GOVERNMENT'S AIMS. FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE. EXPANSION OF MARKETS. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. Outlining the Government's policy of land tenure and settlement and marketing, the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, says the aims arc: —

(1) To brin« into productivity all available unoccupied Crown land which is suitable for development.

(2) To acquire (by purchase) land which to-day is not being adequately farmed.

(3) To provide for the settlement of acquired land after its development.

(4) To provide security of tenure for occupiers hy leasehold titles—conserving the full value of all improvements to the lessees.

(5) To give preference to applications for lands, when developed and stocked, to competent rural and other workers and to sons of farmers for whom land has not been previously available at economic prices, and

(6) To give financial assistance to farmers to enable them to develop and improve their properties, (a) by organisation and support for the expansion and diversification of primary production, to ensure the maximum availability of the commodities which can be marketed within the Dominion and overseas, and (b) the extension of the guaranteed price procedure to provide an income for farmers measured by New Zealand living standards, in accord, with the services given by the farmers.

Negotiations with the L T nited Kingdom and other countries will be continued, with a view to securing expanding markets for the Dominion's primary products by bilateral agreements.

Orderly marketing will be promoted in_ the Dominion to ensure reasonable priees to consumers, whilst maintaining guaranteed prices to primary producers. The producers now get a guaranteed return for butter, cheese, wheat, fruit, honey, onions, barley and tobacco. The internal handling or marketing of these products is now supervised so that the quality is improved, and the service is better and more efficient with nobody making undue profit* and the consumer getting the products of the soil at reasonable prices.