HAWKE'S BAY ESTATES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14276, 17 August 1910, Page 7

HAWKE'S BAY ESTATES.

SUBDIVISION DEMANDED. ■*l r J- Vigor Brown (Napier) made an effective speech in the House m layour ol closer settlement and the ■subdivision of large estates in bis district. He yave details of twenty-four holdings m Hawke's Bav, which contain a total <,f 348.041 acres, representing a capital value of £2,903,408. No Uouiit tlie owners were estimable men, and many of them had worked up to their present position. He had no word against, them, because some of them no doubt were pioneers who originally worked hard, but the time iiad arrived when even the Conservative members realised that these estates must be dealt with. Somehow, tbe laws made to deal with this evil of aggregation had not been able to effect a remedy so far as Hawke's Bav was concerned. It was time something was done A tew large estates had been cut up, but the return he had quoted obtained in 1906, showed that there neve all these estates of over 50.000 acres. In addition, there was a hir-'e number of big estates <,f between 2o 000 and 50,000 acres. He hoped during his term of office to learn more about tbe reason why twenty-four people should be able to hold on to an average area of 22,439 acres each. Anyone who knew Hawke's Bav realised that this would settle at least Io.ODO people. Whv was this not being done:-' lie wanted to see the process of subdivision hurried on. There was a r,ri:,v,s in Hawke's Bay called '-baby-farming." Children who were mere infants "" were given land. They were absentee owners, and once the land was settled on them, nobody else could settle on it until they became twenty-one years of age. There was every inducement for the runholder to have a large family if he could divide up his enormous estates among infants. An unearned increment tax -would settle some of these people, and a much more drasttic absentee,law ought to be introduced.