ROWDY MEETING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1938, Page 21

ROWDY MEETING

MINISTER OF LANDS

LABOUR'S RECORD

DISCUSSED

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, September 27.

The Minister of Lands (the Hon. F. ! Langstone) addressed a large and noisy meeting at Te Awamutu. He was vigorously heckled and rival motions of confidence and no-confidence were drowned in uproar. Eventually the chairman declared the motion of confidence in the Government carried.

After discussing the financial records of the Labour Government and its predecessors and declaring tha;t the affairs of New Zealand had never been better financed than in the past three years, Mr. Langstone derided the use of ab* stractions in attacks on the Government. "All this talk about 'isms,' Socialism, Bolshevism, and so on, is just moonshine," declared Mr. Langstone. "The people don't want abstractions talked to them. They want real concrete things—roads, bridges, shelter, food, wages, and everything else needed for their well-being. The Government must deal with real practical things. AH this newspaper talk about 'isms' and abstractions is so much balderdash."

An assertion by the speaker that the metropolitan newspapers supported vested interests which were out to exploit the people caused loud dissent and uproar. "Kick up as much row as you like," shouted Mr. Langstone above the din. "You won't disruptHhe meeting. You can get up and tear one another to pieces, and it won't worry me. Don't think that your croaking and shouting will bother me in the least."

When quiet had been restored the Minister passed on to the purchase of land for' soldier settlement by the Massey Government, For 403 estates, he said, it paid £5,700,000 and had to write off £2,000,000. In one case it spent £12,466 on land for one settler and made a loss of £9408; in another it paid £215,000 for land and stock which proved to be worth £100,000, and the Mortgage Adjustment Commission had lately valued the property at £33,000.

In a reference to Native land settlement, Mr. Langstone said the Government was carrying on development work at a rate never before known. Pakeha land settlement was being carried out mainly by development of abandoned or forfeited Crown lands, most of which were marginal. This provided work for the unemployed and was bringing in lands that would otherwise be waste.