MR ORMOND ON LAND BILL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8870, 2 November 1907, Page 5

MR ORMOND ON LAND BILL.

CONDEMNATION OF THE MEASURE. By Telegraph—Press Association. WELLINGTON, Friday. In the Legislative Council, this afternoon, speaking in the debate upon the second reading of the Land Laws Amendment Bill, the Hon. J. D. Ormond said ho desired to say something about the speech delivered by the Attorney-General (Dr. Findlay). He objected to his statement that the history of the land legislation of this country was largely one of failure and intrigue. The man who established Liberalism in this country—Sir George Grey—was condtmned by the Attorney-General, for it was under Sir George Grey's regulations that most of the land had been disposed of. He spoke of what had been done under provincialism, and declared ... ■,that. Dr... Fjndlay's reference'to a "devious intrigue and manoeuvring" in the past was unwarranted and absolutely incorrect. He challenged anyone to produce an instance in the fifty 1 years' political history of the dominion preceding the advent of the Liberal Government in 1892, that would compare with the utterly ruinous consequences of the lease-in-perpetuity tenure. He also condemned the ballot and the gross gambling it had fostered. So far as the bill itself was concerned, he entirely disagreed with it." In many respects he was a freeholder, and he wanted to seeTreeholaers in this country. Was it, he asked, necessary to bring in confisca-' tbry clauses at this stage? The great majority of the people who would be affected by the bill were the pioneers who had given up their lives in making homes which they hoped, to hand down to their children. Millions of acres of Maori lands at' the present time were lying idle which should have been settled before the confiscatory clauses of the bill were made to apply to the early settlers. :