LAND SETTLEMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 663, 15 May 1929, Page 8

LAND SETTLEMENT

IP a vigorous land settlement policy is adopted by the new Government at the behest of well-meaning organisations such as the New Zealand Land Settlement and Development League, which held a conference with members of Parliament in the city yesterday, it is to be hoped that the mistakes of past legislators are not repeated, and that in the feverish pursuit of a great purpose men are not forced on to totally unsuitable types of land. When reviewing land settlement and past errors presentday students of the position are apt to disregard any pre-war efforts, among which there stand to the discredit of past administrations, both Liberal and Reform, some of the most disastrous land settlement schemes ever adopted in this country. One example that may he quoted is the Aliu Ahu block, 40 miles or so from Wanganui. The settfers that took np these sections in 1908 or thereabouts have walked off almost in a body in recent years. All the State finance the Advances Department can lend will not prevent jungle-like “second growth” from springing up on moist, shady hillsides, nor exposed clay slopes from slipping into the gullies when the rains come; so it would he as well for people who talk glibly of vast areas awaiting settlement to remember that included in those areas is land of this heartbreaking type, which condemns the unfortunate settler to a life of ceaseless drudgery and holds out little hope of ultimate reward. The politicians and the people spurring them on to fresh effort must take care that they are not betrayed into the pitfalls of the past. The aim of the Land Settlement League as voiced by its president, Mr. W. J. Holdsworth, is to have new settlers put on the land at the rate of 2,000 a year for ten years. This is a very fine ambition, hut if those settlers are to he picked up at random from the midst of unemployed city workers then due allowance must he made for a high percentage of failures. Land settlement as a cure for unemployment is not likely to give effective results for many years. The league’s theory that “a sum of £I,OOO would establish a settler” seems, pending elucidation, very optimistic, though some of the other processes it endorses are very commendable, one or two of them—notably that providing for group settlement of selected areas —hqve already been embodied in legislation. The league’s idea of getting members of Parliament together ten -were present at the conference yesterday—is an excellent one, as also is* its proposal that a special board to control land settlement should he established. One result of such a move would be that practical board members would soon ascertain the real difficulties that confront any general scheme of land settlement.