MORTGAGORS AND TENANTS RELIEF.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21601, 23 March 1932, Page 6

MORTGAGORS AND TENANTS RELIEF.

The Bill which is designed to extend the application of the Mortgagors Relief Act may be regarded as a compromise, as the Act that was passed last session was. >lt is generally recognised throughout the Dominion that there should be a reduction of fixed charges along with the reduction that has been made, and that may yet be made, in salaries and wages. Mortgage rates, and rentals have, in actual fact, been substantially reduced in large numbers of cases. The knowledge of this may have been hidden from the Leader of the Labour Party, but it is fairly common for all that. Nor is it any secret that a great many mortgagees are receiving nothing at all from those to whom they have advanced money, and that in present circumstances household property, particularly when it consists of dwellings that are let on weekly tenancy, constitutes about the worst class of investment imaginable. It has been suggested by one of our contemporaries that the fact that remissions of charges have been made very freely constitutes an argument against the passage of legislation which will provide the opportunity for bringing interest rates and rentals under review. There is a patent weakness in this argument. If it was reasonable that concessions should be made in a great many cases it is probably not less reasonable that they should be made in a great many other cases, and the Government’s Bill supplies additional machinery under which an investigation may be made into the circumstances of such of these other cases as may form the subject of applications for relief. The proposal that private arrangements, entered into by individuals with the intention and expectation that they would be faithfully observed, should be thus subjected to official review is one that would in any but extraordinary circumstances be viewed with considerable alarm. Even in the extraordinary circumstances that are being experienced, the principle that private contracts may be interfered with in the manner that has already been legalised and that is to be further legalised in the Dominion can be accepted only with reservations. The Socialist Party would have a compulsory reduction of all interest charges and rents by 20 per cent. It is not easily credible that its members do not realise that the destruction of confidence in the sanctity of contracts must have a seriously far-reaching effect. The Mortgagors and Tenants Relief Bill offers a safeguard against a policy of legislative variation of binding agreements. It establishes what may be called a Court of Equity in which these agreements may be reviewed in the light of circumstances that were not foreseen when they were made.