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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 83

The Land a Monopoly

The Land a Monopoly.

I look upon the land as a monopoly—(cheers)—and a monopoly the State has a right to control. (Cheers). I recognise in the land 110 individual rights unless subject to the rights of the whole community. I look upon land as in one respect like the air it must be free—it is needed for our use in a State, and no generation has a right to partition the land, or to say to the generation following, "We have decided for you page 4 how the earth's surface is to be." In fact, if some people's views were carried out to their logical conclusion, there would happen what a Maori representative in the Assembly pictured was going to happen in reference to native lands. He said the land was taken from them here and there until in time all that would be left to the Maoris would be in the main roads. (Laughter). And so with some people's ideas of the land. I %ay the State has a right to look after its own existence. What is meant by allowing the full right of private property in land? Suppose some person were to buy up the whole of Newton, if private property in land is to be everything, he might say to the people of Newton, "Be kind enough to clear off' here; I want Newton for myself." Don't think that it is an absurd proposition to put. You hear of evictions. I have seen one. I have seen a valley where men were living in the homes where their ancestors bad lived in for nearly 500 years, and I have seen it cleared of every living inhabitant, on a six months' notice to quit, and the houses torn down. ("Shame"). We have, therefore, a right to take care that in our legislation regarding land we have left the ills of the past, and that the wrongs done the people in other countries shall not be exacted here. (Cheers).