IMMIGRATION AND LAND

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8625, 9 January 1914, Page 4

IMMIGRATION AND LAND

While New Zealand, controlled for the time being by a Tory Ministry under the heaviest possible obligations to squattocracy, is importing immigrants to work for the squatters at a shilling a day,, the' Government of Victoria appears to have evolved a scheme to increase, not the number of farm employees but the number of occupiers of the land. The Victorian Ministry intends to endeavour to interest the countries of Northern Europe in the attractions offered in that State fox immigrants of the agricultural class, but it is not proposed to induce people to come out merely to become hewers of wood and drawers of water for present territorial owners. It is intended to put new-comers on the soil. Arrangements are being made for Government agents to travel in Holland, Norway, and Denmark, and set before the people the advantages offered by Victoria. What are these advantages ? Let us see. Last week the Victorian Ministers for Land, Agriculture, and Immigration, together with their principal departmental officers, and Mr Percy Hunter, the enthusiastic officer in charge of the combined immigration offices in London of Victoria and New South Wales, met in conference in Melbourne in order to determine in what manner greater assistance may be rendered to land-seek-ers. It is proposed to have speciallyprepared blocks of land made re'ady for new arrivals. But, so that no injustice shall be done to Victorians, the Minister for Lands has at the same time instructed his officers to prepare a scheme whereby local applicants for closer settlement blocks may obtain them more readily. This is something like a policy. This is immigration justified—immigration that has some connection with statesmanship, The New Zealand Tory Government could conceive nothing so eminently practical and sensible. Our Ministers are concerned primarily in bolstering the present land monopolists in their insolent possessions, and secondly in scouring the earth to find their masters the monopolists anobundant supply of cheap labour. The New Zealand Tories have set up an elaborate special Department of Immigration, in charge of a Minister who is alleged to have made a special study of the whole subject, but the idea of providing land for agricultural immigrants to occupy and work for their own profit has no place in the expensive scheme, any more than has the provision of land for Now Zealanders. We are almost inclined to advise the Hon. H. D. Bell, the great immigration expert, to take a trip abroad and make observations. At all events, the honourable gentleman might read the newspapers.