FARMERS' UNION ATTITUDE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 73, 23 September 1943, Page 6

FARMERS' UNION ATTITUDE

P.A. CHRISTCHURCH, Sept. 22.. A statement in support of earlier advice that members should refuse service on land sales committees was made today by Mr. W. W. Mulholland, Dominion president of the Farmers' Union, to a meeting of the union's North Canterbury executive. Members questioned Mr. Mulholland about the implications of the Dominion executive's request. He said in reply that some members who had seemed to doubt its advisability were obviously concerned lest it should "be thought they refused to assist in "the establishment of returned men on the land. That was not the case. "There is nothing in the Soldiers' Settlement and Land Sales Act which will put a single returned man on the land," said Mr. Mulholland. "The existing legislation, if brought up to date, | would have covered that. The trouble with the existing legislation, as far as, the Government was concerned, was that it did not give them power to take our land as this new Act does." The land committees were so constituted, he said, that they had little power to take decisions which might be based on their own common-sense reasoning. They were at the -mercy of the Minister. "We wish to protect our members from being placed in that undesirable position. If they sit on land sales committees they are not assisting returned men, but instead are being sold a pup. They are being made use of. We do not wish it to be said that any members of the Farmers' Union had anything to do with this Act." Speculation in land with the object of profit should be checked, he said. Any possible inflation of land values. should be checked and controlled. To this end the Lands for Settlement Act should be amended to enable it to function now. . J "