LIBERAL LAND POLICY CONDEMNED.

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 4, 5 July 1928, Page 12

LIBERAL LAND POLICY CONDEMNED.

The land policy of the old Liberal Government came in for some severe strictures at the hands of Colonel Bell (Bay of Islands) in seconding the Address in Eeply in the House of Bepresentatives last night. "A lot has been said in the recess." said Colonel Bell, "of the success achieved by the land policy of the old Liberal Government. I have no hesitation in saying that in many thousands of cases that policy, instead of being a success, was a very great failure. As far as many hundreds of settlers were concerned they were dumped into the bush and practically left there to waste their lives. During tho past few years we have been spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in providing mefalled roads for the sottlers which should have been provided thirty or forty years r^o. I challenge anyone in the House who upholds the land policy of tho Liberal Government to that that is not true." The land policy of Ballauce and Sir John M'Kenzie had been good as far as it'went, but it did not go far enough. A land policy that did not provide a good metalled road within a reaonable time was worthless to the settler and to the Dominion, and in that connection he contended that no Government had done so much in the matter of improving the roading facilities in the backblocks as the present Government.