Servicemen Settlement

Wanganui Chronicle, 23 April 1949, Page 8

Servicemen Settlement

i Sir, —“Also Graded’’ charged me, in the first instance, with ’deliberate misrepresentation and irrelevancy.’ In his first letter he recounted with what extreme difficulty the ‘ whole meeting’’ (and act just “the chair ’) had to keep me to the point at issue. After I had resumed my seat, my re- | marks were in receipt of considerable I audible approval. His efforts then, ' amounted to misrepresentation. As to my array of “solid integrated facts" which he claims I have dangled I before the public with such regular monotony" over the last few years,' I have made very infrequent use oi either pen or word of mouth of late years. 1 have been 'elected on the vote of my fellow men to some highly responsible offices and over a considerable period of years. What your correspondent is pleased to term “ponderous facts’’ is the sum of the various offices I have held on the vote of my fellow men. in the second paragraph of his letter in your issue of 19th inst. 1 am charged with “headlong interference in a matter which diet not concern me in the least." Here I feel, we have the real “Also Graded." He denies tc another member of the U.S.A, the democratic right to debate in the press a matter he had earlier debated in person at a meeting arranged by the R.S.A. to discuss service settlement on the land. Your correspondent then, denies the freedom of speech and expression in just the same manner as was the case with both Hitler and Mussolini and the case also in totalitarian Russia. Can he deny then, that my original crime in this case was: that he and others in New Zealand have reached the stage as in Russia, where it is a erime to criticise the Administration? Where 1 have set out to expose the humbug of economics being forced to conveniently lit into doctrinaire Socialist philosophy, 1 appear to have trodden upon your correspondent’s pet political corns. The one and only reason why the settlement of returned men on the land has been held up, is on account of Government policy. It may even be that the Government do not want to rapidly expedite such settlement. It may be due to their desire to implement the “pay as you go’’ policy and if this is correct, the Budget could only accomodate a certain amount of settlement annually. The basic reason for the tardiness of land settlement is the legitimate disinclination of owners of farming land to sell at 1942 values. Unlike your correspondent, I feel some personal responsibility towards honouring the promises which were made to servicemen going overeseas. At the first R.S.A. meeting at which Col. Baker and the Under Secretary for Lands were present, I moved a motion which was carried, which advocated a greater use of the 15,000 single unit farms which on a federated Farmers’ survey, would be available if the price for the land was more generous. 1 suggested at that meeting that if these single unit farms were availed of, every serviceman could be settled on the land within twelve months.

In my criticism of “Grade A" I showed that on official Year Book facts/ the nett worth of our farming industry was 144 millions, as compared with a Ministerial statement that 350 millions was invested in transport in this country. On a recent Federated Farmers’ survey, there are 61,000 sheep and dairy farmers in this country. If then, it requires 114,500 of capital for a farmer to retire “a hop ahead of Social Security," let us multiply that £14,500 by say 60,000 farmers. The answer is eight hundred and seventy millions. This sum of £B7O millions then, would be thp amount required to “superannuate” the farmers of this country. But all we can find as the nett worth of the industry is £144 millions. A due appreciation of this vivid and challenging fact should surely silence such “guessers” as ‘‘Also Graded. There is a reason then, for the farmers not falling over one another, in their haste to sell their land. The fact that the Under Secretary for Lands admitted that seventy five percent. of fencing development was written off and that he admitted tacitly a similar write off for building development, is merely corroboration of that nett worth of £144 millions as against the greater sum of £B7O millions—l am, etc., R. O. MONTGOMERIE.