"NOT A FAIR DEAL"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 250, 21 October 1944, Page 7

"NOT A FAIR DEAL"

SMALL FARM SETTLERS

INSECURITY OP TENUIiE

(By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. A suggestion that it would be to the benefit of all concerned if some of the properties under the small farms development scheme were combined, so as to make them economic units, was made in the House of Representatives yesterday by Mr. Smith (Nat., Bay of Islands). Some of the settlers, he said, were not getting a fair deal because the Lands Department was taking the main share of the returns from cream and other produce, and it did not seem to worry either the Government or the department if, after they had taken their pound of flesh, a settler starved to death or not; Possibly the greatest failure m some areas was attributable to the fact that settlers could get no tenure of any description, said Mr. Smith. There was no incentive to improve a property if a man could be put out at a week's notice. Many were losing heart or had already lost heart because there was no prospect of obtaining a leasehold or a freehold. He thought that was a blot on the Government. The scheme was started by the previous Government and there was a definite promise of land tenure. He understood it was the practice for one Government to honour an "undertaking given by another Government, but that promise had been broken by the present Government. The Minister of Lands, Mr. Skinner. said he wished to make it clear that more than 200 small farms had already been combined into possibly half that number. Referring to tenure, the Minister said that in some cases the land was mainly native and not Crown, so therefore it could not be adminstered as it would be if it were Crown land.