LOCKED-UP LAND.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 80, 6 April 1910, Page 3

LOCKED-UP LAND.

A GREAT PROBLEM. DELAYS IN LITIGATION. [OT TCLECBAfU— SPECIAL TO THE POST.] AUCKLAND, This Day. The Minister for Public Wortts (the Hon. R. M'Kenzie) has had an excellent opportunity during his tour of the North to grasp something of the greatest problem this province has to deal with — tho settlement of th« native difficulty in the North. In the Bay of Islands electorate was found the strongest evident of the manner in which progress is being hindered as the' result of the rystem of Maori landlordism. In this elntorate there are some three-quarters of a million acres of native land lying idle and unproductive. The pakeha is forced into tho back-blocks if lie wants to settle, and oven then he can rarely get land on anything like reasonable terms. Round Ohaewai and Kaikohe there are thousands of acres equal to the best dairying land in New Zealand growing nothing but noxious weeds. In this huge electorate there is only ono small dniry factory. If tho country was settled it would be able to boast* as big an oulput of butt«r «R any county in tho province. The member for Ray of Islands, Mr. Vernon Heed, in the course of an interview with a Btar representative, said that there is laud in the Bay o.f Islands electorate which experts from the South have declared is unexcelled in the Dominion, and pi ices for dairying land have already touched £40 per acre. The bulk of tho best land is held by Maoris, and at the present time stands covered with gorse, briars, fern, and in some instances bush. "It is quito unproductive," said Mr. Reed, "and is useless to tho owners and to everyone else, as it does not even nay rates, and is, generally speaking, looked upon as the curse of tlie North. With the exception of a few stray bits of native land, all is unpartitioned, nnd most of it is unadjudicoted upon. The in frequency of the sittings of the court, and th« cumbersome methods provided by legislation for tho determining of titles by the courts are the causes of the backward condition of native lands in the North. A Native Land Court just opening at Hokianga has a list containing over twenty pages of applications that have been hung un awaiting I court for the last three or four years. Blocks containing thousands of acres of land have been slowly proceeding through the many courts provided by legislation for the last ten or fifteen years, and the ownership is stilt unsettled. Most of these block* are awaiting Appellate Courts and other courts for partitioning. Every enconragemont is given the natives to prolong tho enquiry into the ownership of their lands. Ono discontented owner, out of 500 who are satisfied with a judicial decision, can force the vhole proceedings from the Native Land Court into the Appellate Court, and we havo instances of that very position, and of decisions agreed to by all contending parties, and iv some cases actually arranged by the litigants themselves at the instance of a judge, afterwards appealed against. There being no restrictions to appeal, these individuals readily take tho applications from court to court, and in every court the whole proceedings aro reopened. "In my opinion," concluded Mr. Mr. Reed, "matters will not improve until all present courts of investigation are done away with, and a court consisting of two judge* substituted, whose decision shall be final. Blocks of land would then go through at a sitting, and the Government would then be in a position to act «n the best interests of settlement, and not have their hands stayed as at present in so many cases because the ownership of the lands is uncertain."