LAND SALES ACT

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 3, 29 September 1943, Page 4

LAND SALES ACT

Election Result Seen As

Protest FARMERS’ VIEWPOINT

“The results of the election show clearly that the farming community has registered a most emphatic protest against the 'Servicemen’s Settlement and Land iSales Act,” said Mr. Horrobin, Dominion treasurer of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, in a statement yesterday. “There is not one rural electorate in the Dominion where the Government has been given any real support by the farmers. “As the majority of farmers today are returned men of 1914-18, it is also an indication of what these men think of tlie Government’s action in making use of the title Settlement’ in an Act designed to take away from returned soldiers the protection which they had under the Lands for Settlement Act. The loss of his seat by the Minister of Agriculture, in so decided a fashion, is a sacrifice which Mr. Barclay has been made to offer on the altar of sectional interests and can be largely set down to the passing of the Land iSales Act. The Prime Minister must now decide whether he is going to govern the country in accordance with the wishes only of the Labour Party, or whether he will govern it in accordance with the interests of the country as a whole. “If Mr. Fraser desires to obtain the wholehearted co-operation of all sections of the community, then he caunot ignore the indications given by the poll. In these circumstances it is to be hoped and expected that the Government will consult the representatives of the farming community and that it will endeavour to get agreement with them particularly with a view to bringing forward a Servicemen's Settlement Act and a LandSales Act —both Acts designed to enable New- Zealand to make the finest possible job of enabling her returned men to go on the land. “Such action would go a long way toward giving- tile farmers some encouragement in the strenuous efforts which they are making to arrest the decline in production. It would also go a long way toward restoring that co-operation which has long been lacking between the farming community and the Government, but which is urgently necessary for the most efficient prosecution of New Zealand s part in the war.”