The Auckland Star: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1943. THE LAND SALES ACT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 231, 29 September 1943, Page 2

The Auckland Star:

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1943. THE LAND SALES ACT

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£)URING the election campaign the Prime Minister declared that the W T W " S ' adly stand or fal1 " b y the -Servicemen's „!t* t * Land Sales Act ' Avhich becomes effective on October IS " . e overnment did not fall, but it has been given good reason to be impressed by the strength of the opinion hostile to the Act, and particularly m the country electorates. Certainly, if the farmers' votes could be decisive, the Act would never become effective in its present torm. Although the Act affects town property as well as farmlands, it is not difficult to discover why the hostility to it is greatest in the country. The townsman who proposes to sell his property may have its value fixed at the market value on December 15, 1942; the farmer will have his sale price determined by the "productive value" (as defined by the Act), which may be raised or lowered by the land sales committees after considering a number of specific matters, and others unspecified. He cannot estimate with any approach to precision what value will be fixed for his land, if he desires or is obliged to sell it, and he is genuinely apprehensive of injustice. This apprehension may be allayed by the decisions of the committees and the Court, or it may not. No citizen, farmer or townsman, should be obliged to offer his property for sale under such uncertain conditions.

The Act was passed constitutionally after a full, if hurried, debate, ana after objections to it had been heard and alternative proposals rejected. The Government which passed it has been re-elected. It has the constitutional right, as it has the power, to bring the Act into operation without further amendment. Will it be influenced by its experience at the country polling booths, or will it ignore that experience? Against the second course there is one consideration which, alone, ought to be decisive. The carrying-out of an important parti of the rehabilitation policy should not begin in an atmosphere of suspicious hostility. It is a task which for its successful accomplishment will require the highest degree of co-operative effort, and this would be true whether the Labour party or the National party were in power. The National party opposed the bill, and condemned the Act, but it would not wish to be thought hostile to the Act's ostensible purposes, which are to prevent undue increases in the price of land and to facilitate the settlement of discharged servicemen. The question at issue is that of the best and fairest means of achieving these ends. The elections being over, and there being substantial agreement on fundamental aims, it should not be impossible for the parties in the new Parliament to agree on modifications and alterations of the Act as it stands. It is for the Government to intimate its willingness to make a fresh approach to the problem, and for the Opposition to reciprocate with constructive proposals. It is for both parties to bear in mind that solemn pledges were made to the servicemen before they left, that civilians as well as servicemen expect the pledges to be honoured in the spirit in which they were made, and that no spectacle would be more affronting than that of a Parliamentary contest in which proposals to promote the welfare of ex-servicemen were belittled, distorted or rejected by one party because the other had designed them.