CLOSER SETTLEMENT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3775, 20 July 1926, Page 30

CLOSER SETTLEMENT.

STATEMENT BY HON. A. D. M’LEOD. WELLINGTON, July 16. Complaint was made by Mr E. A. Ransom (Pahiatua) in the House to-night that the Mnister of Lands had not taken advantage of the Empire Settlement Scheme. Something like 10,000 immigrants per year were being brought into this country. They gradually drifted to the towns and largely constituted our unemployment problem. At the present time there were 4000 to 5000 men in New Zealand waiting to go on the land if the Government could bring down some land settlement scheme satisfactory to them. If we were to continue to absorb 10,000 a year we were going to create a serious problem for ourselves, unless these migrants were employed to increase the production of the country. The present nomination system was not getting us anywhere and was only another means of the Government relieving itself of a responsibility by shifting it on to private individuals. The Hon. A. D. M‘Leod said that the subject of closer settlement of the land was of great importance and he could assure the House that no man could have given greater attention to it in the last 12 months than he . . Mr Fraser: You altered your opinion of the amount of settlement land available? Mr M'Leod: No, not as to land that anyone is likely to make a success of unless heavly subsidsed by the State. That is tho whole point: What subsidy is the State willing to give to the people on the land? __ , . * Mr W. E. Parry: Have you got no land apart from that? Mr M'Leod: Not worth mentioning. There is some on the border line, I admit, which in capable hands might be developed, but the fluctuations of the market in the last few years have scared even the man with a couple of thousand pounds out of that land. Mr Parry : How much do you think a man would require? . Mr M'Leod said that he did not think •there was a possibility of a man doing any good with less than f 2500. Mr Fraser remarked that it was claimed that the group settlement scheme was now working well in Australia. Mr M'Leod said he did not think the evidence was sufficiently definite yet. He was quite sure that the Empire loan basis of £SOO was worthless. Everyone who lived in a town knew that it cost £IOOO or so to build a house decent enough to ask a family to live in, and the fact was that the cost was greater in the country. He would not, as Minister, offer any encouragement to people overseas to come here unless he, with his experience as a practical farmer, was absolutely certain that by hard work over a period of years they would have something more than a competency and that they would do better than they would as wage earners. The country had to face the question as it had at Rangitaiki. The question was one of subsidy by the general community. They had no hesitation in calling on the State to subsidise secondary industries, but it a subsidy for a land scheme were asked for there would be criticism against him-; self as Minister and against the Government. Mr Fraser: It would depend on the scheme. “Well,” concluded Mr M'Leod, “no matter has been given more consideration by the Government and by inyself, and we are not going to throw it up merely because it is difficult.”