SOUTHLAND BUILDING SOCIETY

Southland Times, Issue 24154, 17 June 1940, Page 6

SOUTHLAND BUILDING SOCIETY

ELECTION OF DIRECTORS Retiring Directors have an unwritten law that they will not canvass for votes. I adhere to this. I have just been advised that a section of the Law Society is combining to have me defeated at the approaching election by using their influence to that end with shareholders with whom they have had business. I did not know of this earlier, having just returned from the North.

I am not lying down to this move which is one for selfish interests. I have been a Licensed Land Broker for 35 years and the business of a Land Broker is not appreciated by the Law Society throughout New Zealand. In August last, amendments to “The Land Transfer Act 1915” were being put through Parliament and the Law Society took the opportunity to include a clause whereby a Land Agent was debarred from being a Land Broker. As I am not a Land Agent they induced the Minister to amend the clause to include a Director of a Building Society as being also debarred. This roped me in and if the clause had gone through, the Law Society would have had the land transfer work all to itself. I wired the Attorney-General as follows: “No good reason for excluding Building Society Director from being Land Broker except a clean sweep of Land Brokers from here in interest of lawyers. Am the only Land Broker in that position in New Zealand. Been efficient Land Broker 35 years. Legislation being employed against my licence at instigation of local Law Society for selfish reasons. Their action is like very small potatoes. I protest against such injustice.” I received a reply that my representations would be submitted to the Statutes Revision Committee of the Legislative Council for consideration. I appeared before this Committee and stated my case, briefly as follows: “I have held a licence for 35 years and have been a Director of the Southland Building Society for the whole period. This is the first time in all those years that the propriety of the dual position has been raised. It has been raised now by the Southland Law Society for an ulterior object. They want to cut out Land Brokers altogether and have the field to themselves. Is there anything in such a dual position inimical to the public interests? If there is it has not been indicated and I cannot see where it lies. If there is, then in the name of all that it/fair and just, why are Solicitors not also being excluded? If it is a desirable measure for the public good in the one case surely it is so in the other. Is a man, being a Solicitor, more honourable or more immune from temptation than a Land Broker? There is a Solicitor in Invercargill holding the position of Director of a Building Society at the present time, then why make fish of one and flesh of another? (To my surprise there were two Solicitors from Invercargill, including the one referred to present for the purpose of pushing their case.) Licensed Land Brokers were brought into being m 1870 for the purpose of giving relief from high legal costs and they have been fulfilling that service ever since. Naturally, Solicitors prefer their room to their company. The efficiency of the service is quite as good in the one case as in the other because the documents have to pass the Receiving Officer and if found in any way not exactly correct, are handed back for correction. When accepted and entered in the register the Crown accepts responsibility for the integrity of the title. There are therefore no risks as regards accuracy when a Land Broker is employed. Ninety per cent, of purchasers who go to a Land Broker are wage-earners and they are not in a position to pay heavy costs. A Land Broker is indeed a boon to such when they know of his existence. This briefly, is the case I submitted. The Bill had passed the Lower House before we were aware of it. It was designed by' the promulgators of the “Building Society director addition” that my licence as a land broker would end finally with the end of the year, but “the best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft aglee.” In view of my representations, the Upper House added a proviso that present holders of licence were to be exempted from this provision, so in January I received a renewal of licence without let or hindrance.

The present move is just another phase of the first one, the same under ■ lying selfish motive—business. The one inducement to the average person is not any Building Society connection but something much more persuasive —the saving in L.s.d. R. J. CUMMING. (Published by arrangement)