THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1925. MANUKAU AND THE LAND.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19144, 9 October 1925, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1925. MANUKAU AND THE LAND.

One of the first-class issues in this election campaign promises to be that of the land. After its temporary eclipse, to find it re-emerging in this manner is harking back to old times. However, the land is a subject which should be of perpetual interest to the New Zealander. Whether he is town dweller or a resident of the furthest back blocks, his fate and happiness are never far divorced from the land. Since one of the contestants in the election, the Labour Party, offers something new and strange in the shape of a land policy, it becomes necessary to examine the question closely, with all its implications. For the more convenient consideration of it, from the Auckland standpoint, the Manukau electorate may be taken as a typical forum where the case can be readily debated. On the one side there, a man whose whole life has been bound up with the land is standing as an outspoken and uncompromising freeholder. On the other is a candidate with the official endorsement of the Labour Party, and consequently a supporter of its land policy. It is true that some months ago, after the very significant result of the Franklin by-election, Mr. Jordan said that as the verdict of the electorate had been overwhelmingly adverse to the "usehold" tenure, the Labour Party should abandon the policy. It was stated speedily and plainly that the party had no intention of doing this. Mr. Savage said so at once; Mr. Holland said the same as soon as hj« had the opportunity. As Mr. Jordan is the official candidate in Manukau he has presumably repented and been forgiven. If not, he would no doubt have gone out into the wilderness with Mr. C. M. Moss, down in Dunedin West. The last-named has lost the Labour nomination for the seat principally because his interpretation of the land policy was not acceptable to the party. Mr. Jordan must be considered as accepting this policy which he said quite definitely should be dropped. The electors of Manukau, and indeed those of every electorate with a Labour candidate, should ask themselves very seriously what this land policy is and what it means. They might as well ask the candidates too.

There must be two difficulties facing Mr. Jordan in Manukau if he approaches the land question. The 1 first is, he must, silently or in so many words, advocate a policy which he has said ought to be dropped. ! The second is that to satisfy the [ electors, many freeholders and some directly dependent on the land for their livelihood, he should define the policy exactly, saying what the consequences of its inauguration would he. The first is his own difficulty. The second is common to all Labour candidates. They should not be allowed to gloss it over, especially in constituencies with a rural population where the land is more than the property, it is so often the livelihood, of the owner. First the candidate needs to explain the relation of the objective "socialisation of all the means of production, distribution and exchange" to the land. Then he should be asked to state the exact implications of the clause "That privately-owned land shall not be sold or transferred except to the State." Addressing electors at Mangere, Mr. John Massey, who is opposing Mr. Jordan, said that one of Labour's principal planks was nationalisation of the land. This provoked an emphatic "No" from Mr. J. S. Montgomerie, who not long ago courageously and cheerfully expounded the policy to the people of Franklin. Yet Mr. Montgomerie did not explain while campaigning, no one else has explained, how any other deduction can be drawn from the clause in the party's policy quoted above. In the absence of an authoritative pronouncement, the objective has to be interpreted as wholesale nationalisation on the lines set out in the official programme. Mr. Montgomerie tried with evident earnestness and sincerity to explain, during the byelection, the form of tenure which would follow when the State resumed the land. He did not succeed. Mr. Jordan should be asked to try. It is more than probable he will not succeed. Neither is any Labour candidate likely to succeed. It is not written in the programme, and if they try to fill in the sketchy outline there contained they may find themselves, like Mr. Mors in lhm- | edin, hopelessly at odds with the i party.

Special emphasis has to be laid on the land section of the Labour policy, because it touches something which is vital to all New Zealand. Manukau presents itself as a typical electorate where it may reasonably be discussed. However well disposed the average voter may feel toward Mr. Jordan personally, they should, it is imperatively necessary

that they should, face squarely the influence which this section of his party's programme must have upon his candidature. He is one member of an organisation Vhich has as a declared objective a process by which private ownership in land is to be extinguished in the course of years, with the system of compensation poorly defined, the form of tenure even more vaguely suggested. As a qualification there is some hazy proposal that the rights of inheritance shall be safeguarded. Difficult as it is to reach any definite conclusion about this latest variation, it seems capable of creating a specially-privileged class who have inherited land, and therefore hold it in a manner vouchsafed to none save those prudent enough to have parents possessed of it. That may not be what the Labour Party means, but the deduction, like a few others, must stand until there is a more specific declaration of what exactly is meant. The fact is that the Labour Party is asking for a blank cheque, empowering it to deal in a wholesale manner with the land upon which the well-being of the whole community depends. Thai possibility has to be reckoned with by every voter in Manukau and all other electorates contested by the Labour Party on its present platform with the land clauses contained in it.