CROWN TENANTS’ HOLDINGS

Otago Witness, Issue 4039, 11 August 1931, Page 14

CROWN TENANTS’ HOLDINGS

QUESTION OF REVALUATION THE PRESENT TIME INOPPORTUNE. WELLINGTON, August 7. Any proposal to revalue the holdings of Crown tenants at the present time was vigorously denounced by Mr W. A. Bodkin (Central Otago) while speaking in the Budget debate in the House today. Any such revaluation undertaken just now, he said, would ruin thousands of farmers and precipitate a national crisis. “ The time is not far distant when there will have to be a complete revaluation of Crown lands in this country,” Mr Bodkin said. “ There will have to be substantial .remissions in rent, but I believe the Prime Minister (Mr G. W. Forbes) and the Minister of Lands (Mr E. A. Ransom) are right when they say the time is not yet. The position is that farming to-day, except under the most favourable conditions, cannot be carried on profitably. If you go through anj 7 pastoral country in New Zealand you will find that almost every farmer owes his success to the assistance given him in the early days by the stock and station agents, who have done more than any other organisation to develop the farming industries of this country.” Mr Bodkin added that the pastoral country represented 70 to SO per cent, of the securities held by the lending institutions in New Zealand, and if these securities were revalued at present-day valuations a great number of farmers would be sent into bankruptcy. They were entitled to demand that the Government should withhold revaluation until prices improved and there was a better conception of the value of Crown securities. There were thousands of Crown leases which to-day were only liabilities, and unless primary produce prices improved substantial premanent reductions would have to be made in rents. What was the use of instituting revaluation for the sole purpose of turning a liability into an asset for the benefit of the mortgagee? He believed the only sound policy was that adopted by the Government—that of postponing revaluation until land which had been bought at boom values and had since slumped had returned to a payable

basis. “There are any amount of Crown tenants who are quite content to carry on for the time being on the present valuation,” Mr Bodkin continued. “ Mortgages were given in the boom time, and at boom valuations, and there is no hope for them until a review of their interest bill and mortgage is undertaken.”