SOLDIER SETTLEMENTS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17740, 29 March 1932, Page 10

SOLDIER SETTLEMENTS

LOSSES IN VICTORIA

EFFORT TO STEM DRIFT

MELBOURNE, March 17. An all-party conference began in Millmere last week to consider the serious Unit in soldier settlement finance ni \ ictoria.

In..ring the past eight years there has keen an annual Joss of atio.it .LI.L’Oo.oJO on tiie soldier .settlement scheme, lhe situation lias dritted from ba.i to worse and, with the prevailing low prices for products, it is recognised that Die burden on the taxpayers will be increased if ladital changes in policy aie not brought about.

In bis Budget speech the Premier and Treasurer, Mr. Hogan, pointed out that for the last eight or nine years, whether the seasons were good or bad, or whether prices were high or low, soldier settlement alone bad involved the colossal loss of £1,C00,000 a year, (if the 6000 odd soldiers remaining on the land more than 500 of them were 100' per cent, in arrears. These settlers had never ]>aid anything to the State, although they had been in possession of blocks from seven to nine years.

It is computed that each soldier settler is costing the Government £166 a year, or more than £3 a week. Altogether the settlers owe the State £3.000,000, made up of interest arrears and unpaid instalments on principal.

The Minister of Lands, Mr. Bailey, said his object in calling tho All-Party Conference, was to endeavor to devise n scheme that would place soldier .settlement on a more satisfactory basis. It should not he the “cock-shy” of politics.

Conferences of soldier settlers have urged that there should he revaluations of every block by a competent valuer on the basis of the. productive value of the laud. They also desired that the interest rate should he assessed annually according to prevailing economic conditions and on the basis of a fair average standard of management, provision to he made for a reasonable living wage as the first charge on farm income, and payments of instalments on principal as ihe second, the estimated balance remaining to determine. the interest rate for that year.