THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1928. MR. HOLLAND'S SPEECH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20075, 12 October 1928, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1928. MR. HOLLAND'S SPEECH.

The Leader of the Opposition is first in the field with a policy speech, having opened the campaign for his party, ahead of the others, at Masterton. The case as expounded by Mr. Holland does not differ in any important particular from that which the country has heard from him and his colleagues previously. The last alteration of any moment was the abandonment of that awkward term "usehold" in relation to the land policy, and the substitution for it of a set of proposals, somewhat nebulous in texture, but resembling in any practical nature the old leasehold policy which the country abandoned long ago. The only other change in what Mr. Holland had to say, compared with what he was saying up to a few months ago, is found in his references to Samoa. This is a subject embracing much that the Leader of the Opposition would doubtless like to forget. He probably feels bound to mention it, but glosses it over as rapidly as he can. This is natural. Developments in Samoa and over Samoa have not been kind to Mr. Holland. He stands convicted of a monumental lack of judgment, to put it in the mildest way. It is easy to understand, therefore, why his thundering denunciations of a few months ago have dwindled away almost into silence. Apart from such minor changes and modifications he is offering the country, both in criticism and in substantive proposals, virtually what he offered three years ago. The same weaknesses, when theoretical propositions are examined in relation to the practical conditions and needs of the time, arc apparent. The whole platform again reads liko a booklearned formula that might have been constructed a thousand miles awaj from New Zealand. This Dominion being what it is, to turn first to what Mr. Holland has to say about the land is the natural impulse. For present purposes it will lie sufficient to confine attention wholly to that. He, like other critics of the Government, makes sweeping assertions that aggregation of land is proceeding to a significant extent. This suggestion, sporadically present in New Zealand political controversy, is becoming fashionable again. If aggregation is proceeding seriously, it is quite right that the public should i know about it, that there should be shattered the general belief that with the growth of dairying and kindred forms of primary production this countrt' is becoming more and more a land of small holdings. But before anyone with any analytical faculty can be convinced, it will be necessary to go a little further than the favourite practice of taking from the Year Book records of acreage and numbers of proprietors, performing a sum in simple division and nourishing the answer triumphantly as proof of an "enormous record of aggregation"— Mr. Holland's own phrase. Let him iind his fellow critics abandon the general and come to the particular. Suppose Mr. Holland wishes to repeat in Auckland the suggestion he made' in the Wairarapa. Let him obtain instances in the Auckland Province, giving details of t ho estates that have been built up by the absorption of smaller holdings. Let him, in fact, give chapter and verse. Then his charges will carry some conviction. .But let him also remember that some years ago a member of Parliament did try to localise and prove aggregation by quoting figures from a given district. The then Minister of Lands, by pointing out that 300 sections which had been listed as rural holdings had disappeared from the records through the area containing them being added to a borough, pricked the bubble completely. The Government, Statistician completed the process by advising that (lie land worked by IS proprietors had appeared in one return as 4'i separate holdings, in the succeeding return correctly as only 13. These things being kept in mind, it will be found bv Mr. Holland, or anyone else, a more difficult matter than at first appears to establish proof of actual effective aggregation threatening to alter the character of rural New Zealand. In other respects the Leader of the Opposition shows his failure to grasp realities when handling rural questions. Take his periodical denunciations of the amount of mortgage debt borne by country land. From the figures he is fond of quoting, he suggests that this constitutes a grave indictment against the Government. None of his proposals, so far as can be judged, provides for paying off a single pound of this mortgage debt. To wipe it off by any means short of wholesale repudiation or confiscation would mean the withdrawal of the bulk of the farmer's working capital, secured on his principal asset, his land. Supposing all these securities were liquidated, where would the money go 1 Unless it remained for use as agricultural capital, production must virtually cease. If it did remain, there would have to bo mortgages to secure it, unless the whole basis of property law were to be altered. Mr. Holland may prove much to his own satisfaction by citing the figures of mortgages outstanding in New Zealand, but he will establish no real proof of anything by arguing in the very general terms he chooses to employ. In the one 'instance affecting the land where he does descend to detail, he is untortunato in his illustration- He

says he would sooner see a given area held by 20 owners of 1000 sheep than by one owner of 20,000 sheep. So would most people, except that in purely,sheep country, not adapted to any other use, one owner could not make a very ample living by running 1000 sheep, as a reference to the average production and ruling price of wool shows immediately. This instance may well serve to sum up Mr. Holland's showing on one of the crucial questions in New Zealand, the land and farming. As his speech clearly shows, he is quite out of touch with the realities of the situation, yet quite prepared to handle it in the light of the ignorance he revealed at Master ton.