THE MEMBER FOR WAIKATO

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1410, 26 June 1923, Page 4

THE MEMBER FOR WAIKATO

CRITICISES REFORM PARTY. SOLDIERS’ SETTLEMENT LANDS TOO COSTLY. In tlm House of Representatives last Friday night, speaking on the Address-in-Reply debate, Mr F. Lye (Waikato) said we should go in for a satisfactory system of immigration. Dealing with soldier settlement he said that in many cases the soldiers had been put ,on the hill tops and barren places. That was so at the Te Miro settlement, near Cambridge. The vendors of that block at £56,000 had come down on the fiat, and had bought first class dairying land. It was the Reform Government that had driven the people to the towns. People in the backblocks were penalised, and had little chance of social enjoyment. In towns schools had been built at considerable expense, while the country schools were neglected. He had recently seen a country school in his electorate made of packing cases and jam boxes, with a coating of ruberoid hanging in strips, and sacks nailed lie ind the children to keep the weather oil. In record to the moratorium the Government had not said what it was gf ng to do. it was all very well for the Government to say “Produce more.'' hut why was, not production put : n the hands of ihe people? What Dm mortgagee needed was a long term of credit lo repined the short, term of credit. He saw no reasonable argument against an agricultural bank. lie complained of the conditions in the second class in the railways, and urged a reduction in railway freights. Speaking of the skim milk industry, lie said one dairy company in his dis - iri.-t had built a factory at a cost of £123,000, and last month he had paid ITS away for a “dead horse.” If a reasonable reduction were made in railway freights the industry might he made to pay.