THE NATIVE LAND QUESTION

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13392, 22 January 1907, Page 3

THE NATIVE LAND QUESTION

'J hk view which the Opposition takes of the proposed Native Land Commission was thus set out by Mr. Jas. Allen, M.H.R., in an interview printed in the Christ church Press:—"This native land question has Ik en forced on Ministers, portly owing to Mr. Masses- and others in the House, and partly owing to the fact that Mr. McNab went to Auckland and found that their one interest was not in his Land Hill, hut in the settlement of a much wider and larger questionthe native hind question. I think you may say of the proposed Native Land Commission what Mr. McNab himself has quite lately said of the late Land Commission, viz., that if he had known it was going to be such a terrible failure he would have had nothing to do with it. 1 question very much whether the Native Land Commission can do much to solve the native land difficulty, 'there are members of Pariiinnt who know as much about the question as any member of the Commission can know. I expect the result of a Native Land Commission will he very much the same as the result of the Laud Commission itself. If the Ministry have any ideas on the native land question, why don't they present them to the House and the country? They ought to have some ideas, and we ought- to have had the benefit of them. It seems utter folly that the country should any longer allow millions of acres ot valuable land to lie unsettled, when men are wanting to get on to that land to turn it to useful account."