NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1929. AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER SETTLEMENTS

Northern Advocate, 14 August 1929, Page 4

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1929. AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER SETTLEMENTS

Registered for Transmission Through the Post as a Newspaper.

Air Justice Pike, who investigated the matter for the Federal Government, has reported that twenty throe and ahalf millions sterling expended on soldier settlements by the different Australian States is irrecoverable. Tremendous as this loss is, it is not so large as a distressed country anticipated. This loss is being borne by the individual states, a fact which has caused resentment, for it is contended that as the war was a Commonwealth

undertaking, so land for soldier settlement wqs a. war need for which the Commonwealth should have assumed responsibility. The settlement of soldiers was discussed at conferences of Commonwealth and ‘State Ministers held in Melbourne and Sydney in June and July, 1927. Mr Bruce, the Federal Prime Minister, said that at the conference between the States and the Commonwealth, in which the basis of soldier settlement was laid down, the States insisted that there should he no dual control, and that as the States wore in control of the lands and all the machinery for land settlement, the scheme should be controlled solely by the States. At the same time he pointed out that the Commonwealth was vitally interested in seeing that soldier settlers wore satisfactorily repatriated, and had already contributed about ton millions sterling towards losses. Moreover, the Commonwealth was still prepared to examine the position of each State, and to bear a further share of the ascertained loss. Since then, the financial position of the Commonwealth, has changed from one of huge annual surpluses to annual deficits almost as huge, but the Prime Minister’s promise still stands. The bad seasons and the fall in prices of primary commodities (with the exception of wool, into the production of which the settlements entered very little if at all) hit the soldier settlers very hard in many instances. It is on the States that much of the consequent loss through failure of the settler to survive falls. The “Sydney Morning Herald,” commenting upon this matter, says that “in the light of events the whole scheme of tilings was foolishly optimistic. When it*happened values generally were, of course, in the clouds. An appalling war debt had been incurred, but everybody wanted to have more money and leisure than before. In effect, nobody was -willing to pay for. the war. Land was at boom prices; labour was dear and the labourer .demanded shorter hours; commodities reflected in their prices the prevailing inflation. It was in such circumstances that the lands were acquired and made ready. The soldiers -were saddled with financial loads that many of them, having no resources of their own, could not carry when the lean times came, as rather promptly they did. It was a sorry business altogether.’’ The Herald realises that the task today is to put soldier settlement once for all on a reasonably sound economic footing. However severe the operation, the losses, actual and prospective, must be cut, and those soldiers who have remained on their * holdings, and have shown themselves to possess temperament and physique suitable for land occupations, given a. chance to work .out their economic, salvation. That will be the best thing to do in the end, and the cheapest thing. Mr Justice Pike has found that Hew South Wales has already lost £7,000,950 of the money sunk in soldier settlements. In the last State Budget speech Mr Bavin, the then Treasurer, stated that at the end of June last year 8953 soldiers had been provided with farms in that State, including 1163 irrigation farms. Of the number, 3089 had either transferred or abandoned their farms, leaving 5864 still in occupation, of fannsi with an aggregate area of 8,399,808 acres. It is obviously desirable that the earliest and most practicable stops should be taken to arrest the tendency to abandon the holdings. Between that tendency and the rapidly growing expenditure of the Commonwealth for war pensions there is in all probability some relationship. The report of the Repatriation Commission for 1927 pointed out that the financial liability of the Commonwealth in this regard, instead of decreasing as in other countries that were in the war, was increasing. There were then 259,821 pensions in force, with a yearly pension liability of £7,372,768. A year later—that is, at June 30, 1928 the pensions in force were increased to 266,670, and the annual liability to £7,48.5,582. In view of the Commonwealth’s experience, Hew Zealand’s attempt to provide farms for returned soldiers does not seem to have been the “unparalleled failure’’ pictured by some critics.