WEST COAST LEASES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue XLVI, 6 May 1914, Page 8

WEST COAST LEASES.

TWO VIEWS

.Reporting Mr Isitt's speech at New | Plymouth the News records: Then ensued a slashing denunciation of the treatment of the natives over the West Coast leases. He pointed out that at the time of the war the natives had been promised that all those submitting to English rule should receive back their confiscated lands, but ; tor fifteen years they asked for them in yam and in some cases died without tnem. lnen. under Imperial pressure a commission was set vm, and 187 000 ?n ri^n Were retl£? ed to to*m, and then &U.UOU more. These areas were vested in Public Trustee on trust for the natives for ever. Then, without consulting the Maori owners, the Enclish tenants were offered the lease in perabout 18,000 a^res were not smart enough to take the offer, and that was their fault. Later on, they asked the Government to give them th© perpetual lease and were refused. They had made repeated complaint 6 to the Public Trustee that the terms.of their leases were too exacting, and a comm.lS!li On x 1 luct was later set up, showed that the terms were constantly altered in favor of the tenants " a.nd without consulting the Maoris The leases of those 18,000 acres were then It !S 2 1 ' and the toldere'knew- that the land would be put up for public competition—which they dreaded. The tenants had sub-let the knd (which cost them 2s an acre) for anything up to £2 per acre. If it had gone to public competition the natives would have had a chance to get fair values The Maoris were responsible for improvements by tenants up to £5 per acre, but not for compensation to sub-lessees which incidentally showed th*t Mr Massey s sympathies were with the speculator and not with the small far--s?anmn The **™V% could not find the fyO,OUO required for compensation for improvements, and Mr .Herries, the father of the natives," refused to lend l!" •n6f ld- "Yoa are in a cole < and ttt will have to extend your leases at «■- increased rent for 10 years. I will rf-\m two-thirds.of that "rent to meet £ ■■> compensation for improvements in t..._ next ten years" (and-there was n<-- no limit set to the value of impi 3ments which could be expected. WiAii this was m-otested against, Mr Merries (who had advocated "free titles .or natives) refused to listen. If he had deliberately used his special know-' ledge to serve the ends of* speculators in native land he could have devised no more cunning design.

At Mr Forbes' Opunake meeting, Mr Hickoy asked: Are you in favor of putting o\vt in 10 years farmers from their homes as is the case under West. Coast leases?

Mr Forbes: No, beine; a farmer b,e knew that shifting people off the land was not in the best interests of the country, ond he was not in sympathy with anything that displaced people from, their farm homes.