“Home Truths” on Ngaroma’s Plight

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 92, 9 July 1927, Page 12

“Home Truths” on Ngaroma’s Plight

MAKING MOST OF IT MR. REID SPEAKS OUT (THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Friday. In contrast to many stories which have been told of the plight of settlers at Ngaroma recently, Mr. D. S. Reid, Waikato, spoke in the House of Representatives with what he terms a few “home truths” about the position there. He personally investigated conditions in the settlement, and declares that they are not so bad as they are represented to be. Earlier in the day Air. Harris had made a stirring appeal for Ngaroma residents, stating that children were being clothed by public appeal. Air. Reid says that there is no evidence of lack of clothing or lack of food. Certainly the settlers were passing through bad times, but no worse than those experienced in other parts of the country where farmers were up against it. As showing that the settlers themselves were making the most of their troubles, Mr. Reid quoted individual cases, one of which was of a man who, knowing his land to be suffering from bush-sickness, and worth little as a productive unit, sold it to another man, receiving £ 400 cash. Later, when the purchaser could not pay the instalments, the seller took the place back. Another man had come to him and said his children were starving, and asked what could be done. Six weeks later he (Air. Reid) again saw the same man, who complained that the Government would not let him take up fresh sections. Air. Reid asked what he was going to do if he had fresh sections. The man replied that his wife had enough money to finance him in the

venture, and he himself could get good credit. Here was a man who could not pay rates, and whose children were said to be starving. Supposing Ngaroma had boomed, suggested Air. Reid. Mr. Harris: Then the men would have had a fighting chance. Mr. R*iid said men had look at it from both sides. Bush -sickness had been blamed for the backwardness of some of the children at Ngaroma, but he quoted authorities from carefully made inquiries he had pursued to show that bush-sickness had no such effect upon children. In one place the children were into the second generation, and there was no sign of deficiency. Some of the children at Ngaroma were mentally deficient, but this would have been the same anywhere else, whether bushsickness existed or not.