THE H.B. TRIBUNE FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1930 FARM LANDS IN BOROUGHS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 71, 7 March 1930, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1930 FARM LANDS IN BOROUGHS

A brief message received late yesterday merits some special reference. It came from Invercargill and stated that at the Municipal Conference now sitting there “it was unanimously decided that the Urban Farm-lands Rating Bill be not approved.” The Bill which has thus so signally failed to find favour with delegates from any municipality in the Dominion is one that was introduced by the Minister of Internal Affairs (the Hon. P. A. de la Perrelle) last session and, after some discussion on its second reading, was referred to the Local Bills’ Committee “to take evidence and report.”

The Minister, in the course of an address (briefly reported in our columns yesterday) to the Conference made special allusion to this Bill. He pointed out that the evidence that was tendered by the Municipal Association played an important part in the parliamentary Committee’s proceedings, and that among other things the Association’s representatives gave an undertaking that the subject would be v'bry carefully investigated by the Conference when it came to sit. Acting on this undertaking, the Minister said, the Committee came to the conclusion that it would be better to defer the measure and reported to the House accordingly, the House agreeing to the report. Having thus stated the position the Minister called upon the Conference “to give most careful thought to this serious question.” Presumably, the Conference complied with the ministerial re-

quest, and the result is the unanimous resolution that has been quoted. The Bill, it may be explained, was one that was designed to afford relief to the owners of land within boroughs or town districts which was being occupied and used solely for the purposes of carrying on rural industries of one kind and another. It was the outcome of a report which had been submitted by a committee —consisting of Mr. R. M. Watson, 8.M., Mr. W. T. Strand, Mayor of Lower Hutt, and Mr. W. Nash, General Secretary of the New Zealand Labour Partyset up by the previous Government to enquire into the position and which had conducted a searching investigation. It provided that, upon application by petition from any occupier or occupiers of what are defined as “urban farmlands,” a classification of the lands within the rating area shojild be made by a Commission distinguishing (A) farm lands having no prospective or potential value for building purposes within the following ten years, (B) farm-lands having some such value, anti (C) all other rateable property. The scheme then proceeded on the footing that in respect of classes A and B only percentages— also to be found by the Commission—of the full rates payable in respect of class C should be leviable.

There can be no reasonable doubt but that, in quite a large number of the municipalities, some such relief is needed as this Bill sets out to provide. More es pecially, of course, is this the case where the system of rating upon unimproved value is in operation. There is naturally no thought in this for the speculative holder who merely sits still awaiting the time when his land will acquire a bigger selling value as the result of the spread of the residential area and the expenditure of public money. Only those are to be considered whose holdings are so situated that they have no present or reasonably early prospective value for any other purpose than their use in purely rural pursuits. This being the case, it is a little difficult—although there are, of course, two sides to every question —to understand why some measure of consideration should not be extended to the occupants of such holdings. It is readily to be understood that objections would suggest themselves to those having to formulate the finance of public bodies to be effected. But that is matter of convenience which should be adjustable witiout great difficulty and which should not stand in the way of doing justice. The broad argument is that, perforce of circumstances and of no volition of their own, the holder:’ of the lands in question do not and cannot derive anything like the same benefit as others from the expenditure of the rates they are called upon to pay. It seems only reasonable, therefore, that some concession should be made to them until such time as their lands begin to acquire value as urban holdings, when, of course, the position is open to revision. We are as yet without any report of the discussion on the subject that took place at the Conference, but it seems strange indeed that among all the delegates there does not seem to have been any to voice effectively the seemingly just plea of the farm-land holder. The probabilities would seem to be that, being but a small minority of the general body of ratepayers and having no special representation at the Conference, the holders of urban farm-lands have been treated as a negligible quantity. However, judgment in this regard may perhaps better be suspended until we know what shape was taken by the “serious” discussion for .which the Minister appealed.