Property Owners’ Rights

Northern Advocate, 7 October 1941, Page 4

Property Owners’ Rights

AN interesting question has been raised in Wellington as a consequence of the disastrous results following upon recent heavy rain and floods, which damaged public and private property to the extent of £IOO,OOO. Many of the private houses damaged occupied picturesque but precarious positions on high ground and on hillsides which had been excavated to provide sites. The selection and preparation of these sites were admittedly within the province of private ownership, but now, in face of the fact that a large sum of public money will be required to remedy damage done by rain and floods, it is contended in some quarters that the State or local authorities should have the right to say whether a site selected for a dwelling is one which should be used for the purpose. This opens up a new vision of State control, as does the suggestion that the owner of land shall first obtain the permission of the State before destroying bush which conceivably possesses flood prevention potentialities. In both cases the liberty of the subject to do as he likes with his own property seems to he endangered, but the experience of the Wellington city ratepayers, faced with a huge emergency expenditure through flood damage, some of which may possibly have been caused by the excavation and other work done on private property, is calculated to give those ratepayers a new outlook upon the question of property rights. This matter will doubtless be widely canvassed throughout the Dominion.