MORTGAGORS’ RELIEF

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22099, 1 November 1933, Page 6

MORTGAGORS’ RELIEF

The poignant anxiety, as Mr Poison described it, of farmers throughout the Dominion will be ameliorated by the announcement which was made on behalf of the Government yesterday that a Bill will be introduced in the current session to extend the operation of the Mortgagors’ Relief Acts. As it may be surmised that there are a great many applications under the existing law with which, owing to the press of business, that has been thrown upon them, the Mortgage Adjustment Commissions have not yet been able to deal, an extension of the legislation meets the requirements of equity. The Government proposes also, the Minister of Justice states, to effect certain machinery amendments in the present enactments. No doubt the administration of the law has demonstrated the need for an improvement of it in a few particulars, but the Ministerial conception of what constitute “ machinery amendments ” may not correspond with that of a great many those who are directly and deeply interested in the operation of the law. The whole principle of the Mortgagors’ Relief Acts is dangerous. It has been accepted because desperate diseases require desperate remedies and not because it could be justified in other than the most abnormal circumstances. The legislation is of an emergency character, in keeping with other legislation under which contracts have lost their old validity. It is to be acknowledged that it has,_on the. whole, worked with so much smoothness that dissatisfaction with the administration of it has not been openly expressed very strongly, and if the Mortgage Adjustment Commissions have leaned, as has been said of them, towards the side of the mortgagor they may reasonably be held to have, in so doing, complied with the -spirit of the Acts. The legislation, however, goes as far as there is any need for it to go.