LAND SALES ACT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25338, 23 September 1943, Page 4

LAND SALES ACT

FARMERS ON COMMITTEES REFUSAL OF SERVICE SUGGESTED (P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Sept. 22. A statement in support of earlier advice that members should refuse service on the land sales committees was made to-day by- Mr W. W. Mulholland. Dominion president of the Farmers 1 Union, to a meeting of the North Canterbury executive.

Members questioned Mr Mulholland about the implications of the Dominion executive’s request. He said in reply that some members who had seemed to doubt its advisability were obviously concerned lest it should be thought they refused to assist in the establishment of the returned men on the land. This was not the case. New Powers Wanted

“There is nothing in the Soldiers* Settlement and Land Sales Act which will put a single returned man on the . land,” said Mr Mulholland. “The existing legislation, if brought up to date, would have covered that. . The y trouble with the existing legislation so far as the Government was concerned was that it. did not give it the power to take our land as this new Act does. The land committees were so constituted, he said, that they had little power to take decisions which might be based on their own commonsense reasoning. They were at the mercy of the Minister. “We wish to protect our members from being placed _in that undesirable position. If they:sit on the land sales committees they are not assisting the returned men, but instead are being ‘sold a pup/ They, are .being made use of. and we do not wish _it to be said that any members of the Farmers' Union had anything to do with this Act.”

Speculation in land with the object of profit should be checked, he said. Any possible inflation of land values should be checked and controlled, and to this end the Land for Settlement Act should he amended to enable it to function.

Leave to Doubt Limitation Doubt that the Government sincerely meant the provision in the Act which limited its operation to five years beyond the end of the war. was expressed by Mr Mulholland. “In my opinion that amendment will not remain in the Act if the present Government is still in power at that time,” he said. .. . . Mr Mulholland also expressed doubt about the provision in the Act which provided for the land- committees to include a mejnber with the same qualifications as a judge of the Supreme Court. The wide knowledge and good standing which were commonly accented as the qualifications for such a person, said Mr Mulholland, were not actually written into the_law. There was nothing in the Land Sales Act to say that the land sales judge should, in fact, have the same standing as was commonly attributed to a judge of the Supreme Court He objected, he said, to the wording of the Act. In many places, he said, it was vague and had no precise meaning m law. ■