CROWN SETTLERS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 38, 8 November 1933, Page 10

CROWN SETTLERS

Commendable Efforts MEETING OBLIGATIONS Assistance to Tenants “Crown settlers in general are in good heart, and are making commendable efforts* to keep their properties in order, and to meet their obligations to the best of their ability,” stated the report on the settlement of Crown lands for the year ended March 31 last, which was tabled in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon. Receipts from rental and other payments were stated to have been fairly well maintained, the total amount collected during the year being only slightly less than for the previous year. Numbers of the department’s tenants had been unable to meet their rent in full, and it had been necessary to assist them in accordance with individual circumstances. So long as these circumstances were beyond the tenant’s control, the first consideration had been to keep him on his farm and to maintain his property as well as could be reasonably expected, while at the same time requiring him to carefully budget his expenditure and to contribute to the State a fair share of the revenue produced from the farm. Selections of Crown and settlement lands on all tenures during the year totalled 280,51 S acres. At March 31 the tenants on the books of the department numbered 37,714, occupying a total area of slightly over 19,000,000 acres, while 1,800,000 acres of purchased estates were held under lease under the provisions of the Land for Settlements Act. Receipts from all sources, excluding discharged soldiers’ settlement account receipts, totalled £742,820, a decrease of £33,669 on the previous year's figures. Rents, the payment of which remained postponed at March 31, amounted to £223,253. Arrears of rent at March 31, including arrears in respect of the current half-yearly’ charge, totalled £1,010,979. Tlie Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Wellington district. Mr. H. W. C. Mackintosh, stated that the Unemployment Board’s scheme 4a and 41) had been taken advantage of, and had been the means of turning hitherto useless portions of farms into revenueproducing areas. Good work had been done on the Mataikona settlement in clearing off second growth. No new estates were acquired in the Wellington district during the year.