PREFERENCE LEASES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIX, Issue 14611, 19 February 1908, Page 6

PREFERENCE LEASES.

Tire Otago Land Board very properly has left tho Minister of Lands to determine the question of preference leases that has been raised in connection with tho cutting-up of the Otekaike Estate. After the statement by Mr R. O. Campbell which was quoted in our columns last week, and which, wo understand, was repeated before the Laud Board, there can be little doubt that Air Mitchell and Mr M’KelLai' are morally entitled to the preference that was accorded to them in the first instance by the Board and the Minister. The Legislature seems to have gone very deliberately out of its way to make tho preference available to any person who had been employed By the owner of an estate acquired by the Government for five years immediately before tho acquisition, and who had been deprived of his employment by the change of ownerfillip, and both Mr Mitchell and Air M’.Kellar appear to possess this qualification. Wo do not pretend to follow the line of reasoning by which tlie Solicitor-General reaches the conclusion that tho “ five years’ employment ” means “continuous employment on or in connection with tho estate acquired,” hut wo are satisfied that nine educated laymen out of every ten would interpret the language of the Land Act in tho way it has been interpreted by the members of tlie Land Beard. At the same time, we feel that this wide measure of preference is 'wholly unjustified, and that its effect was never realised by Parliament when it adopted the clause. A simple way out of the difficulty for the present would ho for the Minister to refuse his assent to any recommendation for preference until the Legislature has had an opportunity to reconsider tho matter; but, as Mr.M’Nab hinted to our reporter yesterday, this is not exactly the way in. which, a Jaw made by tlie representatives of the people should he administered. The point, however, is of so much importance that the land boards and the Minister may very fairly make the fullest use of the discretion with which they are entrusted. and decline to- grant any preference lease until the moral and legal claim of the applicant has been clearly established.