LAND & WORK.

Wairarapa Age, 4 July 1929, Page 5

LAND & WORK.

ADDRESS-IN-REPLY DEBATE OPENS BRISKLY. OTAGO MEMBER’S CHARGES. ALLEGED DUMMYING. (By Telegraph.—" The Age" Special.) WELLINGTON, July 3. Without preliminaries, the House of Representatives commenced the Address-in-Reply debate immediately on meeting to-night. It was a vigorous opening, as the mover, Mr. W. A. Bodkin (Central Otago) denounced the former Government’s land administration so strongly that Reform members broke precedent by interrupting. Unemployment, suggested Mr. Bodkin, was due to the failure of primary industry adequately to absorb labour during the sixteen years of Reform administration. Land, the primary industry, had not been allowed to expand. The Reform Party had permitted a million acres of pastoral country in Otago to be again leased to 98 holders. He gave particulars of an alleged case of dummyism under which a large landowner, unable to make a declaration under the Land Act when desiring to lease 35,000 acres, was ultimately able to obtain control through one title being given to his wife and another to a limited company, the shareholders comprising the landowner and his wife. The new Government, he said, had already achieved something in land settlement and he hoped that in addition to the compulsory acquisition of large estates it would impose such a heavy graduated land tax as would make it commercially impossible to hold large areas.

Reform supporters showed dissent and amusement, provoking Mr. Bodkin to inform the Leader of the Opposition (the Right Hon. J. G. Coates) that ho was embarrassed because he was in the position of being found out by his sins. Mr. G. C. Munns (Roskill) seconded the Address-in-Reply motion, declaring that New Zealand was too fine a country to be wrecked by party politics. Therefore, all sections of the House should combine to solve the many important problems facing , Parliament. He had been pledged to repeal the wheat duties, but investigation led him to believe that such a drastic change could not occur without bankrupting the southern farmers. The North did not want a cheap loaf at such a cost. The debate was adjourned on the motion of the Leader of the Opposition.