LAND SALES ACT

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 32315, 17 September 1943, Page 5

LAND SALES ACT

STATEMENT BY MR J. THORN

MEETING HELD AT KOPU

ORONGO AND HIKUAIBLOCKS

Addressing a well-attended meeting at Kopu, Mr Thorn, Labour Party candidate for Thames, gave a full explanation of the Servicemen s Settlement and Land Sales Act. He stated that this legislation was designed to safeguard the servicemen who wished to go upon the land from any repetition of the mistakes which marked the land settlement of soldiers after the last war. The object of the Act was to prevent any boom in land prices, and it would, stabilise the prices of land at its productive value as at December 15 last.

Mr Thorn said that the Act had been based on resolutions adopted at the last annual conference of the R.S.A. and that it embodied principles advocated by Mr Alex. Gordon, president of the National Party, and by Mr W. W. Mulholland, president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, at the annual conference of these organisations as recently as last July. In both'cases these gentlemen had urged that the productive value of land should be determined and that the prices of land should be fixed at the productive valuei It was precisely this principle that was in the Act. R.S.A. Opinion

When the Bill was introduced to 'Parliament, the Dominion Executive of the R.S.A. published a statement in the press in which that body affirmed that the Bill was a definite attempt by the Government to implement the ■resolutions'passed by the last annual conference of the R.S.A., that the R.S.A. approved of the principles in the Bill, and that it had no alternative to offer. Similar statements were also made when the Bill was going through the Legislative Council by the Hon. Wm. Perry who for several years had been the national president of the R.S.A.

Giving instances of what happened after the last war, when many soldiers were ruined by being placed on over-priced land, Mr Thorn mentioned the cases of the Orongo and Hikuai blocks. The first of these had been bought for £100,890, and soldiers had been placed on the .block to carry the commitments at this figure. They were nearly all ruined. The value of this block to-day was £16,800, so that the State had suffered a capital loss on this block alone of £84,000.

State’s Heavy Loss

The Hikuai block was bought for £37,500 and was now valued at £16,000, so that the loss on this block was £21,500. Altogether the Government after the last war had spent £20,657,000 on lands on which to settle soldiers, and the losses suffered by the State on this transaction amounted to £12,500,000. These losses did not cover what the soldiers had lost—years of hard and fruitless- work and all their savings. Mr Thorn stated that no sensible person wanted any repetition of these extravagances and stupidities after this war. Mr Thorn stated; that under the Act the Government had no power whatever to take any home either in the town or country, that it also had no power to take any one-unit farm, and did not wish to do so. The only land that it could; compulsorily acquire under the Act was land in a block in excess of one-unit capacity, and if it took any such land two conditions had to be observed (1) the owner’s- home had to be left to him and enough land to enable him to make a livelihood, and (2) only ex-servicemen could be settled' on the land so acquired. Native lands were wholly excluded from the Act.

Mr Thorn said that there was nothing- new in the principle of compulsory acquisition of land, because this principle had been put into the Statute Book by Mr R. J. Seddon many years ago, and was still the law of the country. The only thing new about it was that the price to be paid for land was to be fixed at the productive value on December 15 last, at which value it was hard to see how any landowner would suffer any loss if ever his property was transferred. Mr Thorn’s explanation of the legislation was frequently applauded, and he was j*iven an unanimous vote of thanks and confidence.