ABANDONED HOLDINGS

Taranaki Daily News, 5 July 1930, Page 32 (Supplement)

ABANDONED HOLDINGS

FLIGHT OF RETURNED SOLDIERS. ' The allegation that the Lands Department wag pressing returned soldiers for the repayment of moneys advanced to them by the department to enable them to take up rough, hilly Crown land on which they were placed, but which was subsequently found unfit for farming by reason chiefly of the unpreventable slipping away of the hillsides and the economically uncheckable spread of fern and other growth, and which many returned soldiers were, after spending "all their money and working hard for years, forced tc abandon and take up other work, was the subject of a question by Mr. W. H. Field (Reform, Otaki) in,the House of Representatives. „ Mr. Field asked whether the Minister would make a statement to the House as to the Government’s policy in matters of this kind, particularly as to whether the department proposed to make claim upon the subsequent earnings of such soldiers for money technically owing to the Govern ment in respect to abandoned lands. Mr. Field said that it-was well known that there were large tracts of steep lull country in the Upper Wanganui and other districts which had been believed to bo good farming land because of the class of trees growing on them, but which, for the asons he had stated, had proved for settlement and should have never been felled or roaded. , The question was placed on the Oide paper.