SOLDIER SETTLERS' RENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18577, 8 December 1923, Page 10

SOLDIER SETTLERS' RENT.

THE STATE PAYS ITSELF.

NOTHING LEFT FOR RATES.

[by telegraph.—own correspondent.] WHANGABEI, Friday.

The Bay of Islands County Council has expressed the opinion that the rates on returned soldiers' land should be reimbursed to the local body affected, and especially so because the Government at present takes an order on the settlers' cream cheqiies in payment of rent and arrears of» rent, thereby leaving the settler with practically nothing to pay the local rates. The council considered that instead of the Government taking the whole of the money for rent, a certain proportion should be returned to the county councils in part payment of local rates. The YVhangarei county clerk, Mr. H. C. Hemphill, in a statement at a meeting of the council, said that the Whangarei Council had losit- about £280 in the past four years in rates from soldiers' farms. The soldier settlers on the whole had paid up well.

Mr. L. A. Johnson, a soldier settler under the Returned Soldiers' Settlement Act, said that the soldier settler did not handle much of his own money. All proceeds of sales of wool, lambs, butter-fat, or other produce went to the State to reduce the settler's responsibilities. Little but bare living expenses was left over, and the men had a small chance of getting enough together to meet the rates. He considered that the department should pay the rates to the local bodies instead of getting the first cut in full for liabilities owing to the State. Rates were a charge on the land, and as the department received the money from the products of the land, ifc was only fair that it should pay the rates. It was resolved to endorse the remit from the Bay of Islands Council.