LAND PROBLEM IN AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 88, 13 April 1912, Page 12

LAND PROBLEM IN AUSTRALIA

LEASEHOLD VERSUS FREEHOLD. The scheme which the Australian Government has dug out of its inner con- j 6ciousness for the settlement of the Northern Territory on purely leasehold conditions is likely to mako a leasehold v. freehold controversy fizz and bubble for a while more furiously than usual. Other influences in the same direction (says the Bulletin) are the proposed State-owned suburb of Daceyville, on the outskirts of Sydney, and the device whereby such farback State lands as N.S.W. still possesses are to be let on the perpetual system, at an annual rental equal to 2& per cent of the value, with reappraisement at 20-year intervals. All these doings- and propositions aim at securing the unearned increment for the community, and they cause the Tory heathen to rage in a perfumotory sort of way. For it is the professed delusion of the Tory heathen that nobody will settle on leasehold ground — regardless of the fact that a huge proportion of the people of Australia. have done it already, to the great profit of Berry and Onslow Antill and Cooper and the Australian Agency Company and the South Australian Company and the Peel River Company and the Vat). Diemen'e Land Company, as* well as innumerable city landlords; and regardless of the wellknown circumstance that most of the people of England have done nothing else for centuries. Also, the heathen maintain that there is it» the mind of every man an ineradicable desire tojiave a home that is really his own, and that it is unscriijtural to oppose this Heavenimplanted instinct, and that no nation ever rose to greatness in the leasehold line- of business. Which is very sad and wild and wonderful, seeing that in Great Britain, out of 509,171 occupiers of an acre or more, no les sthan 447,108 are either leaseholders or yearly tenants, and a bare 62,063 ponces the bit of land they dwell upon; while, at for smaller occupiers, about 95 per cent, are mere tenants, mostly under muoh less forbearing landlords than the State is likely to prove. Yet— the Lord or somebly having •■fflioted the Tory with extraordinary woodenness of the head— while he fieolares that everybody has the inherent right to poaeess the freehold of his home, he whoops in the same breath that it is linful to disturb the great possessions of Macarthur Onslow and other landlords, who live by preventing their tenants securing that same freehold. CITY AND TOW* VALUES. It iB in the cities and towns that the theory of- national proprietorship of the land should be vigorously maintained. As regards wheat and sheep lands it is possible to adopt the freehold system, without the disadvantages that have so often attended it that is to say, without big estates and landlords and land monopolies — and when these ars eliminated the prinoipal disadvantages ate removed. The independent country settler, living on his own bit of soil, and wallowing beautifully in the sentiment of proprietorship, is quite feasible, and, if he wants to -wallow beautifully, there is no reason why, under proper restrictions, ho shouldn't do so. But in the cities there mult be landlords and teftantß, for it is impossible for every occupier of an office in a huge block to own the block. Probably three times out of four the building itself stands on leased land, and' no injury is done to anybody's home-loving instincts thereby, for a blook of offices is no more a home than is a block of shares in a bank or a heap of scrip in an insurance concern. Even the most weepful advocate of private land ownership oan'fc show that it would be any worse in a sentimental sense for the State to be ground landlord of a row of warehouses than for a private individual to occupy the position. And it is in the cities that the unearned increments really grow. There are plenty of country lands that are worth no more now than thay were forty years ago, but in the big centres the rise is fairly Bteady. At the best, tho rural property that waß onoe worth f!l an acre may now be worth '£60,, but city property thinks nothing of rising from £1 an acre to several hundred pounds per foot frontage. When the State confines itself to the ownership, of farm lands, a certain inward yearning prevents it taking all the rent that oan be got, httnoe the proposed perpetual leases at 2£ per cent. When it confines itsnlf to building workmen's houses at Daoeyville the same sinking sensation of the stomaoh leads it to exact the smallest possible rent and make the least possible profit. As on awner of whole citioß it could auotion 50-year leases to bankers and merchants and other bad characters on the same hard-hearted business prinoiples as any other capitalist. It oould annex the unearned increment without any more scruple than the next person. Unfortunately, it has, so far, confined tho policy of State land ownership to the unprofitable branches of the business, and left the remunerative ones to Private Enterprise. Why it has done this no one knows. ' LEASEHOLD SYSTEM. The weakness of the leasehold system lies in the danger that its advocates may endeavour to make it a great apparent success by charging absurdedly low rents. When a perpetual lease is granted, as is now proposed in New South Wales at a rental of 2i per cent, per annum on the value of the land, with sundry • advantages inoluding the right of sale and transfer* thrown in— -in other words, when a lease is granted at less than half the current market rate — the lessee is really presented with more than half the unearned increment, under pretence of saving the unearned increment. The Government may easily, under these conditions, lose more than it professes to s&tb. For £100 worth of land the State gets £2 ' 10a a year, less cost of collection. If the ! land is sold and the money invested in i Government securities the State oan j eauily get £3 10s a year. Supposing the oxtru £1 per annum to be put to a sinking fund for tho repayment of the public debt, it will represent £131 at the end of iifty years, and at the end of one hundred years it will stand for about £700, and at the end of 200 years it will represent an amouut that it is wearisome to think of. That is a good deal of unearned increment to get out of £100 vrortirf of land. Money accumulates at compound interest a great deal more reliably than agricultural or pastoral land values accumulate.