Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, JUNE 12, 1922. THE IMMIGRATION POLICY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 421, 12 June 1922, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, JUNE 12, 1922. THE IMMIGRATION POLICY.

The discussion which took place at the R.S.A. Conference in Wellington on Friday, while it indicates considerable diversity of opinion upon the question, leads to the conclusion that tho policy adopted by the Government upon immigration is regarded as sound by the majority of our returned men. The R.S.A. Executive has evidently devoted a good deal of time to the consideration of I hi 1 problem of Umpire settlement, and recognises that bv far the best

method ol providing lor the defence of the country in the future is to settle it. as far as possible, with ex-service men of British nationality. Although it is over a century since the first white men landed in New Zealand, our population is still only a little over a million and a quarter, and, while large areas of country are settled and occupied, there is ample room for development and for the settlement, within the next twenty years, of five or even ten times the present population, provided capital is available and that the incoming settlors are of the right stain]) —men and women who will not merely mark time, but set to work with good heart and the will to build up their own fortunes, and so assist in the upbuilding of the State, on the same lines, and with the same spirit that was exhibited by our early day pioneers. The greatest of (he problems associated with land settlement schemes for immigrants, so far as New Zealand is concerned, is admittedly the difficulty of finding good land at a reasonable figure. The Government has been charged with bolstering up values by its land purchases on behalf of returned men, hut we have the evidence of men like Mr Hugh Morrison, provincial president of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, I hat the Government has paid really less lor its hinds than other purchasers, and that, taken as a whole, the purchases were well within the values given. The fault really rests with the absurd system of valuations adopted by the Government of 1902-5 and, quite 'mistakenly (as we think), continued by successive Governments, in oH’icially endorsing values as obtained by land sales in the several valuation districts. The fact that the Government values are, generally speaking. below those obtained at such sales does not really affect the position, because even the partial endorsement of those values has had the effect of further increasing prices. The true basis of value, as the late Mr Seddou admitted In 1905 (when the much smaller values of unimproved land endorsed by the Government, of that day were looked upon as unduly oppressive troin the taxation standpoint) is the producing value of the land, or, in other words, the return it may be to give il used for the purpose tor which it is best adapted. That, however, is beside the question with which wo are more immediately concerned, although its influence upon prosperous settlement is far reaching. The Government has other means at its disposal in the promotion of settlement which might bo advantageously used in connection with its immigration policy and the solution ol the unemployed question.