MANY PROTESTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 198, 21 August 1943, Page 6

MANY PROTESTS

MR. HOLLAND'S VIEWS

"DEEP SENSE OF INJURY"

(By Telesraph.-Parliiunentary Reporter.)

WELLINGTON, this day

An appeal to the Government to respond to the heavy demand of public opinion that the Servicemen s Settlement and Land Sales Bill should be postponed so that a better measure could be brought down, more closely approximating the desires of returned men themselves, as expressed in a communication from the R.S.A. to the Government, was made in the House ot Representatives yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Holland, when the bill reached its Committee stage.

Mr Holland questioned whether the Government realised the extent to which feeling had been raised. There was a deep sense of injury among all sections of the community The bill covered every type of land, even the land of soldiers who had fought in this war. He had received many protests.

"Anomalies and Injustices"

Attention of the Government had been drawn by the Opposition to many anomalies and injustices in the bill. He had noticed in the debate on the previous evening that Government members ceased to speak as soon as the radio was cut off, which showed that their interest appeared to be only of the microphone type. The Opposition did not propose to hold the bill up for any considerable time. It recognised that the Government had an overwhelming majority, and it realised that by weight of numbers it would succeed in placing the measure on the Statute Book.

It was, however, the duty of the Opposition to help in making the legislation better. While the Opposition would not take the role of obstructionists, it would still exercise its rights and prerogatives. The Government had shown clearly that it did not desire the co-operation of the Opposition because it had not adopted any of the suggestions that had been made. By using the closure at the previous sitting before many members of the Opposition had spoken to an amendment which had been proposed, the Government showed that it intended to bludgeon the measure through.

With such a measure feeling was likely to run high, but the Opposition had no desire for tempers to become frayed, continued Mr. Holland. It would carry out its duties with dignity and fervour. Election day was not far off, and he asked what time the Government had to appoint the committees and Court proposed under the legislation to bring in a gigantic new bureaucratic department before the bill came into operation on October 18. The Government would agree that from now until that date it would be "open slather," and anybody could sell their property as long as they could get the transaction through by the date mentioned in the bill.

Government's Effrontery

Mr. Holland said there had been nothing to establish that there had been land aggregation in New Zealand since the beginning of the war, and no cause for the belief that there had been an increase in prices of land since that time. In conclusion he said the bill was designed to give effect to the Government's land policy and in proof "of this he quoted a statement made by the late Mr. Savage, who had said that privately owned land should not be sold or transferred except to the State.

"That is what this bill sets out to do," he added, "and yet the Government has the effrontery to call this measure the Servicemen's Settlement and Land Sales Bill."