NEGLECT OF THE COUNTRY

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15272, 23 June 1923, Page 5

NEGLECT OF THE COUNTRY

GOVERNMENT CRITICISED. BY MEMBER FOR WAIKATO. I3y Telegraph.—Special to Times. WELLINGTON, Saturday. In the House of Representatives last night, speaking on the Ad<|ress-in-Reply debate, Mr F. Lye (Waikato) said we should go in for a satisfactory system of immigration. Dealing with soldier settlement lie 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 conic down on to the flat, and had bought ilrst-class dairying land. It was the Reform Government that had driven the people to the towns. People in the backblocks wero penalised, and had little chance of social enjoyment. In towns schools had been built at considerable expense, while the counry schools were neglected. He had seen a country school of packing cases and jam boxes, with a coating of rubberoid hanging in and sacks nailed behind the children to keep the weather off. In regard to the moratorium, the'Government had not said what it was going to do. It was all very well for the Government to say, “Produce more,” but why was not production put into the hands of the people? What tiie mortgagee needed was a long term of credit to replace the short term of credit, lie saw no reasonable argument against an Agrlcuitoral Bank, lie complained of the conditions in the second-class in the railways, and lie urged a reduction in railway freights. Speaking of the skim milk industry, he said they had built a factory at a cost of £125,000, and last month lie had paid £6B away for a “dead horse." If a reasonable reduction were made in railway freights the industry might be made to pay.