THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12551, 19 April 1904, Page 6

THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION.

SPEECH AT LAWRENCE.

A CORDIAL RECEPTION.

CRITICISM OF THE GOVERN-

MENT.

[BY TKI.EGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION.]

Lawrence, Monday.

Mr. W. F. Massey, Leader of the Opposition, gave his first address in Ota go this evening, when he addressed a crowded meeting in the Town Hall at Lawrence. The meeting was an enthusiastic one, and the speaker's remarks were frequently punctuated with applause. Mr. G. Jeffrey, the Mayor, occupied.the chair, and Mr. D. Reid, member for Taieri, occupied a seat on the platform.

Mr. Massey, who was received with loud applause, said he had to thank the people of Lawrence for the feeling of fair play which promoted the petition asking him to speak. The Premier had attacked the party to which he belonged, and he (Mr. Massey) proposed to defend the Opposition and hit back fairly and without misrepresentation. His party thought the Government ought to bo watched and criticised, and they intended to watch and criticise. The Premier, in his speech at Lawrence,; referred to the Opposition as Tories and Conservatives, and claimed that his party were Liberals and Democrats. Ho (Ms. Massey) did not believe that the terms Conservative and Liberal applied to the politics of this country. There were as good liberals on the Opposition side of the House, as on the Government benches. THE FAULTS OF THE GOVERNMENT.

Since the days of John Ballaisce the present Government had fallen from grace. Was the Legislative Council at all representative of the people- * No. It was representative of the Premier, who had stuffed the Upper House with his friends and supporters. Men were also bundled into the public service not because they were good officers, but because they had political influence behind them. The fault he had to find with the present Parliament was that a good many members had been misguided enough to give pledges that they would support the Government, but he was sure the electors of the colony would remedy that at the first opportunity. The Opposition had always been found supporting the. true principles of genuine Liberalism, in preserving and maintaining proper rights of the people and preventing the colony being dominated by one man, and insisting upon economical administration. There was more fault to be found with the Government's administration than its legislation. Sufficient opportunity was not given in Parliament for discussion on and the revision of the Departments of State. The Premier charged the Opposition with obstruction and denied that there was anything in the way of legislation by exhaustion last session. Mr. Masscy ridiculed the Premier's denial. The Premier charged the Opposition with obstruction, and what happened ? When the space occupied by the speakers in Hansard came to bo measured it was found that Mr. Seddon occupied as much as the four Opposition members who spoke most and longest. If there was one thing more than another responsible for waste of time and money it was the egotistical verbosity of the Hon. Richard John Seddon. . LAND TENURE. There was no question about which there was so much difference of opinion between Government and Opposition as the land question, the difference being that the GoI vernment party favoured tin* leasehold and j Opposition members favoured the freehold that was to say, the Opposition favoured the option of the freehold being given to all tenants of the Crown. In a recent speech the Premier stated that the Opposition wanted to abolish tire leasehold tenure altogether. That was not the case. They did not want to abolish the leasehold. If a man was satisfied with the leasehold by all means let him have it. What he (Mr. Massoy) wanted was that when a man became financially able to purchase the property which ho had cultivated he should be given the opportunity of doing so. Mr. Seddon had also stated that if Crown tenants had the option of the freehold it. would lead to in aggregation of large estates. There was no danger of that taking place, because wherever the tenure was freehold and not hampered with restrictions, in nine cases out of ten the tendency was to subdivide rather than to aggregate. But in order to make perfectly certain that there would be no aggregation his party intended to go on, the lines of the amendment of which he gave notice last session, and which provided practically that no man -with the land which lie already possessed should be able to take up more than 600 acres of first-class and 2000 acres of second-class land. That was a complete answer to the objection raised by the Premier and . his supporters. Of the subjects that came before the House there was none of more importance than the subject of land tenure because every acre brought into cultivation added to the wealth of the colony, and if the subject- of land settlement had in the past received , the attention it deserved there would now be less unoccupied land in the colony. He admitted that a certain amount of work in this direction had been done, : some of it good work, but there were still large areas of Crown lands in bush and swamps which ought to be growing crops or. grass. He took it that where then* were settlers wanting land and land wanting settlers the two should bo brought together. It was said that the ballot introduced a gambling element in connection with settlement, and prevented many , suitable men from obtaining land. It was difficult to say what should take the place of the ballot system, but the suggestion had been made that when a settler drew a section he should not be allowed to transfer it, say, for five years. That was done now under .the Lands for Settlement Act it ought' to apply to Crown lands as well, and it would do away with a great deal of the gambling that went on. It was recognised by many persons that our land laws were somewhat out of date. On two occasions the Government had introduced Land Bills, and referred them to the Lands Committee, and that committee had done their duty, but the Bills had not been proceeded with. He could not say why, but lie believed the real reason was that the Movernment were afraid of an amendment being moved providing for the freehold. It was well-known that there was not. much firstclass land left in the hands of the Crown, and consequently settlers required more encouragement, to go on to second and third-class land. We were apt to think that our present hind laws were the most liberal the colony ever had, but in the days of provincial Governments there : was in some distriots of the colony a statute called the Homestead Act, which provided :-,that , in the case of certain blocks a family could take up 200 or 250 acres if they fenced it and brought a fifth of it into cultivation. We had nc such liberal land law- at present, and he was strongly of opinion that in order to bring into occupation more of the second and thirdclass land we should have to revert to the Homestead Act. or some other such law. It might be said that we were parting with our public estate, but the best asset the State could have was a sufficiency of prosperous and industrious settlers. With regard to the lease in perpetuity a great deal, migh*- be said on both sides of the question. From the point of view of the State there were hundred of thousands of acres that paid not-a shilling in land tax. From the point of view of the settle, the objections wore perhaps more, apparent to those who had experience of * the lease in perpetuity than to those who lived in towns. There were irritaAuig visits of inspectors, continual demands for rentals, threat l ! of forfeiture if rent was not paid punctually, and' in advance. Certain prominent members of the legislature had openly expressed themselves as anxious for ! a devaluation Act, but- the most important Bdl of this kind was the so-called Fair Rent Bill of a few years ago, which provided that n commission of three men should have the right to raise or lower the rents of all lands in the colony. Crown lands included. In such circumstances what would lease in nerpetuity bo worth? Not the paper it was written on. These . were the things >:.which' made the settler holding under lease in perpetuity feel that his improvements, the labour of many, years, were to a certain extent at the mercv of men who bad no sympathy with his hardships and aspirations. He naturally longed for a more secure form of tenure, and that more secure form of tenure was in his (Mr. Massey's) opinion) only to be found in the freehold. He believed that the Irish 'Land Act, which provided for giving freehold to tenant farmers, had done more to satisfy the Irish farmers than anything done for there during the last 5C years. Surely our New Zealand settlers should not be placed in a worse position, as reaard? tenure than the tenant farmers of Ireland. If we wanted a man to do his best with the land it was necessary to let him feel that the land he was working was not only for himself, but for his family after,

him, and he (Mr. Massey) believed that from the freehold we would get better results than from any form the ingenuity of Parliament could devise.' PURCHASE OF LAND FOR SETTLE-' y&;*? : i MENT. ?%' " With regard to land acquired under the land for settlements scheme, opportunities had not always been given to men of small capital. According to official reports in the case of one. large estate it had been cut into blocks from 1200 to 6000 acres. That was not closer settlement as. ho understood it, and he questioned the wisdom of borrowing money in England and exhausting our credit simply .for the purpose of cutting up one large sheep run into smaller sheep runs. He yielded to no one" in his wish to see our lands properly occupied, but care should-be taken that the land purchased should be suitable for cultivation and likely to be taken up by good settlers. When laud was at £20 or £25 an aero he did not think it wise for the Government to interfere. Then it was a question whether, the settlers .under the Land for Settlements Act should have heoption of the freehold, and lie said they should have, that option under conditions • and restrictions which would make reaggregation of largo estates impossible. Another point was that we had to go to England for most of the money for the purchase of lands for settlement. By so doing the ownership of our land was slowly but gradually passing to people outside the colony, and that fact was causing anxiety to many who had tho welfare of the colony at heart. If our settlers had the opportunity of purchasing their laud, the money thus received could bo used for the purchase of other land, and it. would not be necessary to go outside the colony for the money required. PROSPERITY OF THE COLONY. Leaving the land question, Mr. Massey said the Premier took the colony's prosperity to the credit of the Government. Was tho prosperity of the colony not owing to the fact that there had been a good demand for everything we • .\iu produce? It was the workers, and not the drones, who were responsible for this. Tile Government had very little to do with it; in fact,, tilings woidd have been better if the Government in power had been less extravagant and more capable. -■:-.;. PREFERENTIAL TRADE

The Preferential Trade Bill should not have been rushed through in the dying hours of the session. He was thoroughly in sympathy with anything feasible that would strengthen the ties of Empire and maintain Britain's industrial supremacy. Ho was inclined to think the majority of colonists were with Mr. Chamberlain in his great fight. There was a great -disappointment on the part of many people who were anxious to assist Mr. Chamberlain when they read the Act passed last session, but he (Mr. Massey) trusted that next session there would be an amendment Bill, which would put matters right. They ought to readjust tho whole system of Customs taxation so as to give prefere ice to British goods, but not to increase taxation. Now that the British manufacturer had been put on his mettle he believed that foreign competitors would have a very lively time, not only in British, but foreign markets. THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL. Although he believed reform was wanted in many directions, it whs wanted more so far as the Legislative Council was concerned than in any other direction, particularly in the method of appointment. The system of appointment was wrong, and should not bo tolerated by any English-speaking community. Fitness for tho office was never thought of, judging by the men who had been appointed. No matter how good a colonist a man might havo been, or how well he had served his State, if he did not acknowledge the Premier as his leader the Upper House'was not for him. Even Sir Maurice O'Rorke. who had held a high position in Parliament, had not been appointed, lie agreed with tho Premier that the Upper House should either be amended or ended. He (Mr. Massey) said it should be amended and made representative of the people, and the whole and undivided support of his party would be given in the direction of amending the Legislative Council. TAMMANYISM. Tin Premier objected to the term " Tamraanyism, ' but it was a well-known fact that Mr. Seddon had appointed a number of his relative: t'j the public service, and hundreds of hangers-on had also been given billets in the public service because of political influence, and then there were many districts of the colony which received a great deal more than their share. Take the West Coast, for instance. Taking the last three years, four comities there, although they only represented four and four-fifths of the population of the colony, had received thirteen and three-fifths per cent, of the. total expenditure that had taken place. Those four counties were receiving 9 per cent, more than their share. He hoped the question to be submitted at next election would be whether the people were going to approve of the present state of things being continued, whether they were going to approve of tho American system of spoils to the victors. He ventured to say that members who supported such a state of things would be found at the bottom of the poll. THE WAR IN THE EAST. The war going on in the East was of the utmost importance to the people of Australasia, because no one could tell what the result would be. He was sure they all hoped that the British Empire would not be involved, but treaty rights must be respected, and if the British were drawn in he believed it would be as a united Empire, and there would be no more holding back than there was iu the Boer war. CONCLUSION. In concluding, Mr. Ma=sey said it was well known that hundreds of thousands of pounds were expended annually, from which the taxpayers of the country got very little. A hearty vote of thanks was accorded to Mr. Massey by acclamation. In returning thanks, the Leader of tho although he had addressed larger meetings, ho had never addressed a more appreciative,- enthusiastic, and friendly audience.