POSTPONEMENT URGED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25303, 13 August 1943, Page 4

POSTPONEMENT URGED

DANGER OF HASTE (F.0.P.R.) WELLINGTON, Aug. 12. The opinion that the Government would be well advised to take time for further consideration of the Soldiers’ Settlement and Land Sales Bill was expressed by Mr J. A. Lee (Dem. Lab., Grey Lynn) during the second reading debate on the Bill in tiie House of Representatives to-night. “ I cannot help feeling," he said, “ that the Government really thought that this w'as a great electioneering Bill. There is, however, the danger that by putting it through now it might do a great disservice to the cause it is designed to serve.”

There was much to be said for the Prime Minister’s suggestion that the House should agree on certain affirmations respecting the Bill, Mr Lee continued. As it dealt with soldier settlement, and also altered the whole basis of land tenure, it would not be unreasonable lor the new House after the election to set up a committee to spend three months examining the Bill in detail. It was difficult in times of flux to lay down a firm policy for rehabilitation. It was also difficult, if not impossible, to fix the basis of productive value at a time when produce values were unstable.

Mr Lee said he was one who believed that the whole idea of land settlement as at present understood was wrong, in that in settling people on the land the real benefit went to the financiers. The farmer under the mortgage system spent a large part of his working week slaving for the mortgagee before he began to earn anything fog himself. He wanted a new system, which the National Party was not yet ready to accept, and which the Labour Party used to urge, but frofn which it had beat a retreat. This would be debt-free land for settlement. Whether the House liked it or not, the landowners, large and small, were a political factor that could not be ignored. Until their goodwill and that of the house owners and of the farmers on the land was assured, a land stabilisation policy could not succeed.

“ We should start with a scheme affecting excess land,” said Mr Lee. “ Why attempt to bring one down which affects

every person who has only sufficient land for his own use? We are in grave danger of causing people to fight a measure that is designed to help the soldier.”