THE LAND COMMISSION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2667, 26 April 1905, Page 6

THE LAND COMMISSION.

The determination of the Land Com-

mission to commence its investigations in the Auckland provincial district after it has completed the taking of evidence in. Canterbury involves an important alteration in the arrangements which the Government had proposed respecting the movements of the Commissioners. The original intention was that the whole of the South Island should first be' exhausted — that ' the Commission should visit Westland, Nelson, and Marlborough .in . succession after finishing its inquiries in Canterbury, — and that before any evidence at all should be taken in the North Island meetings should be held in Wellington for the preparation of a reporton the South Island. Whether a report by the Commissioners upon the evidence obtained by them in the South Island might not be open to the objection that it would be based on incomplete information and that the conclusions contained in it might be subject to modification after the evidence available in the North Island should be sectxred may be an arguable point. But the programme that was drawn up by the Government for the benefit of the Commission had at least this merit, that it aimed at obtaining a report of some kind for the consideration, for what it might be worth, of members of

Parliament during the ensuing session and for utilisation by candidates at the general election. Now, however, there seems to be a possibility that the session may be over and that the members may have separated, each to enter upon the task of wooing his constituency anew, before any deliverance may be secured from the Commission, which, accord-

ing to the arguments that were advanced in support of its appointment, is to throw light upon the dark places and is tq^guide the Legislature and the country to a sound judgment upon the various points connected with the tenure, the settlement, and the use of the land in the colony. If so, it either means that the question that was remitted to the Commission is to be hung up as a political issue until after thei general election,

or else that the small number of politicians and electors who do not alread}^ possess settled convictions upon the main subjects of controversy will have to depend upon the reports of the evidence that are ptiblished in the press for such information as they may desire to enable them to form their opinions. If the Government could conveniently devise it that the consideration of the whole subject of the land policy might be deferred for treatment by another Parliament it would doubtless welcome the reprieve that would thus be afforded it-. But the country settlers are, we imagine, hardly inclined to allow Mr Seddon and his party to go on toying with this question much longer. They will seek for definite assurances from candidates for their suffrages at the general election. Consequently, whether the Commission has furnished a report or not, it is hardly possible that the land policy of the colony will not be the issue of chief moment to which candidates in country electorates will require to direct their -attention ; and if they wish to derive enlightenment from the proceedings of the Commission they will have to do so through the channel of the published newspaper reports. Nor is it likely that they will find the information contained in these insufficient far their purpose. On the contrary, the carefully-com-piled summaries of the evidence that our reports stipply will probably meet the requirements of most candidates much more satisfactorily than the verbiage of the official record would. We regret to notice that the Premier has been represented as complaining f that the reports which have been published by ourselves, in common with three of the other leading newspapers of the colony, have been partial. And we are surprised that ' one of our Christ church contem-

poraries should have allowed its sense of loyalty to the Premier to have so far outweighed its sense of justice as to have given_its endorsement to Mr SedSbiTs" compiainF,'lind to have brought against us, together with the other journals to which we have referred, a charge of unfairness in our treatment of the evidence Hint has been given befoi'e the Commission. It is imputed to us that we have " deliberately suppressed a quantitj' of evidence in favour of the leasehold form of tenure" and that we have ''systematically magnified the grievances of the Crown tenants and the desire of some of their number to obtain Hie freehold." A more offensive charge could hardly be levelled against reputable journalists. If it were true, we should have forfeited the claim, which our entire history justifies, to be regarded as fair and trustworthy recorders of current events. But we have the satisfaction of knowing that it is an absolutely false statement, and we have not the smallest doubt that the public, which recognises that we make an invariable practice of giving full and fair expression to the views of all sections of the community upon questions of public interest, however much these views may differ from those we ourselves entertain, will believe that there is not a fragment of truth in the allegation that has been made against us. The recklessness of the charge is sufficiently indicated by the tawdry flimsiness of the " one example " that is quoted in favour of it. The evidence of a member of the Farmers' Union, taken at Ashburton, who denied the assertion that the Farmers' Union had promoted the petition from the Crown tenants in favour of the freehold, was, we are told, piiblished in full. Whether this serves as an example of systematic magnification of the " grievances of the Crown tenants " or whether it is to be looked upon as a magnification of " the desire of some of their number to obtain the freehold " is a question

into which we need not inquire deeply. But it is of some interest to remark that our report of the special portion -of the evidence of this typical witness upon which the charge of unfairness is based is actually a line shorter — for the charge narrows itself down to the number of lines that are devoted to particular kinds of evidence — than the report contained in the paper which is so indignant over our conduct in '" magnifying " what the witness said. Then, it is charged against us, by way of contrast, that our report of the memorable meeting at Rakaia, where the Commission waited long and impatiently for the advent of the witnesses whom even the Crown lands ranger could not induce to come forward, " condensed into three lines " the evidence of a Crown tenant who said he thought the Farmers' Union had had more to do with the petition than the Crown tenants themselves had. The evidence, relating as it did to a mere suspicion, was plainly valueless. Our virtuous contemporary itself devoted only nine lines to it. But, having selected it as a typical case, it has " magnified " it as much as possible ; and, to strengthen its position, it has, apparently without the slightest qualm of conscience, distorted its own report of the evidence of this witness, who said that " a member of the XJnion had gone, round the Mead Settlement " suggesting that they should sign a petition, to make it bear the construction that the Union " had sent " one of its members to the settlement with the object mentioned — a very different thing, as will be seen. A more ridiculously weak case than that presented by our contemporary in support of its preposterous charge could scarcely be imagined. But it airily says, " There na.ve been scores of more flagrant cases of the same kind." We await with the greatest cheerfulness the presentation of the proof it is able to offer of a single case. That we have been compelled to condense the statements of witnesses is, of course, sufficiently obvious. And where evidence of the same kind has been repeated over and over again we have not thought it necessary to give the same amount of space to the latter as we gave to the earlier versions df it. Our space is too valuable to allow of our publishing, time after time, the same story, whether it be in favour of the freehold or in favour of the leasehold tenure. But to any fresh features that are disclosed by the evidence we give such prominence a^ seems to

he demanded. That is a perfectly fair course to pursue in the woik of reporting the proceedings of a Commission before which evidence ig given that is necessarily to a large extent a repetition of what has been, said before, and, even though the Premier may be displeased and even though his followers may, for reasons of their own, profess to be shocked at it, that is the course we intend to pursue throughout the sittings of the Land Commission.