ANTICIPATING PREFERENCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIX, Issue 14683, 14 May 1908, Page 6

ANTICIPATING PREFERENCE.

No wonder intending applicants for sections on the Cnlverden Estate are complaining of tlto preference that is being given by the Land Board to former employees on the property. Under the Land Laws Amendment Act of hist session any person who lias been employed on an estate for at least five years immediately before its acquisition by tho State, and who, by reason of tho acquisition, has lost his emplovment, may be granted a renewable lease of any allotment on the property without competition. But the employees at Culverden, not content with this enormous privilege, have applied to the Land Board for permission to ruji stock on the estate, in anticipation

of tho Minister approving of their leases, and the Land Board, with a complaisance which it lias not always displayed in more deserving cases, has granted their application. Tho result is that the autumn growth of grass is being rapidly eaten off tho property, and the value of tho sections to the incoming tenants is being very considerably reduced. The Land Board explains that tho sheep are being allowed to graze on only a portion of tho property, but wo should like to know what precautions it has taken to insure that tho limit it lias placed upon its generosity is being observed and how it has satisfied it-self that the particular sections it has opened to the employees will bo granted to tliem by tho Minister. Tho law does not provide that the employees may select their own sections, or that the Ministor must give them the ones they want, or any others, and wo should think that after his experience at Otekaiko Mr M'Nab would be very careful about granting preference under any conditions. We do not wish to prejudice tho applications of the Culverden employees, but clearly the intention of the Legislature was to give the Minister power to make provision for old servants, who would be really inconvenienced by the loss of their employment. It did not. expect that, station managers and cadets, who usually arc,well able to shift for themselves in other directions, would be given this advantage over outsiders, who may have spent years in searching for a piece of land. But oven if tlto Culverden employees should be granted tho preference they have claimed, the other tenants still will havo some cause for complaint. The sections are not yet fenced, and tho sheep that are on the estate may pass from one allotment to another until they have eaten off the best part of the gross and left many of the incoming tenants with bare paddocks to face the winter. The tenants, as one of our correspondents pithily puts it tliis morning, will be required to pay their rent in advance, and they ought to be given some grass in advance. The autumn has been a particularly favourable one for the growth of feed, and if the estate had been kept free of stock after the clearing sale last March it would now be presenting a very attractive appearance.