SMALL FARMS ACT

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 136, 5 March 1941, Page 10

SMALL FARMS ACT

Revival Of Controversy

Regretted

“It is to be regretted that the Minister of Lands, Mr. Langstone, bass seen fit to revive the controversy ou the Small Farms Amendment Act,” says an official statement issued yesterday by the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. “It is strange also, that he has taken this step'just at a time when most of the thinking, people in the Dominion are endeavouring to. bring about that unity which the present emergency demands. In the present grave circumstances, the union has no desire to reopen the argument, but it cannot allow Mr. Langstone’s statement to go unchallenged.

"Let it be said, therefore, that the most serious objection to the Act is the offence which the Act commits against British constitutional principles. This is well known to Mr. Langstone, and to other members of the Government, who should realize by now that public Ministerial whitewashing of the Act can be construed by farmers only as a deliberate attempt by the Government further to antagonize them.”