LAND SCANDALS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Otago Witness, Issue 3332, 23 January 1918, Page 25

LAND SCANDALS IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA

(Fbom Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, January 9. It is a long time 6ince the report of any oommission appointed by a Government has caused such a sensation as the one submitted by Mr Noel Webb. S.M., upon the question of land purchases made by tho Vaughan Labour Government, which was succeeded in office by the present National Government.

Mr Webb inquired into many things, but he finally, and very clearly and explicitly, put blame upon two men —Mr Styles, who was Chief Secretary in the Vaughan Government, and has been Minister of Education in the National Cabinet, and Mr Jones, the Government Valuator. His condemnation of those two men is complete and scathing. The South Australian Government (according to Mr Webb) was buying land in varioua directions, and generally with great caution. An area known as Williams's Land was submitted, and, according to the report, ita purchase was hurried on by Mr Styles in an. extraordinary way. Mr Webb says that collusion existed between Mr Styles and a Mr West, who, on the day that Cabinet, on Mr Styles's recommendation, decided to buy the land, stepped in and bought the property. He immediately sold it again to the Government at a profit of JB4OCO. The commissipner therefore found that Mr Styles " betrayed the business of the Government to Mr v West, and that Mr West dealt with the Government under- this unfair advantage." He also found that the only reason Mr West had for buying Mr Williams's property was to sell it again to the Government. Mr Styles expedited the matter so as to be able to inform Mr West that ho had recommended the purchase to the Government. The Commissioner says that tho Government was recommended by its valuer, Mr Jones, to buy, for £292,000, land worth not moro than £158,000 The owner of the land and Mr Jones were also personal friends. "I-am unable," Mr Webb says, "to ascribe Mr Jones's valuations to an error of judgment. The discrepancies are too vast to admit suoh an explanation. The whole valuation is so exaggerated as to admit only of the explanation that Mr Jones wilfully departed from his duty as Government valuator and put untrue values on the land. The irresistible .conclusion which is to be arrived at by the mere fact that such valuations were made is that they were made dishonestly." Mr Styles, of course, resigned his portfolio; and demanded an inquiry by a Supremo Court judge. Ho has asserted, most venomously, that the report is the outcome of political bias on the part of Mr Webb. "Mr Webb," he says, " probably remembers how he paced my offioe on more than one occasion, beseeching that I should secure for him an appointment under tho Vaughan Government. 'Do not send me,' he said, 'to Port Pirie. but appoint me Deputy President of the Industrial Court and increase my salary, which is thd least I can expect at your hands.' "