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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Personal Volume

Crown Lands

Crown Lands.

Now, I shall leave this native lands administration question. The next question I proposed to deal with was in regard to Crown lands. Let me say this, because I shall never fail to repeat it, that I regret to say that as yet there is neither a majority in the House nor in the country that agree with me, but I believe the time must come when the State will be deemed the owner of the land. From that opinion I do not flinch. Do not think, as some people seem to imagine, that when the State becomes the owner of the land the tillers of the soil would be in a worse position than they are now. I believe they would be immensely benefited. I believe—and I say that this is the way to test this policy—that if this colony from the earliest days had laid down this principle that the State page 8 was to be the owner of the land, giving to the person who got land from the State not only the utmost consideration, but the utmost security of tenure, it would have been far better for our small farmers than their position to-day. What is the position of many of them to-day? Their land is not their own. Many of them are working for an absentee whom they never saw. They are working for the mortgagee, and many of them have been placed in this position : They have got their land, many of them, at a high price. All their little capital, all their little savings, have been absorbed in the purchase of the land. When they come perhaps to stock the land, or when there come one or two bad seasons, what happens? Why this happens : They were short of money; they had to get money somewhere; they had to put their land in pledge, and some of them instead of getting better, as the years rolled on, after working hard morning, noon, and night, have lost their land, and have had to go out of possession, having no home for themselves or their families. If, on the other hand, they had kept their capital—if they had not had to pay away their capital for the purchase of the land, but had got their land on a secure tenure—on such a tenure as is now given in the Land Act of 1885, and given also in a previous Act passed by Mr Rolleston—the tenure known as the perpetual leasing system—they would have had this security: The land would have always been their own; if they improved the land they could not have been put out of possession of the land unless they were paid for their improvements. There would have been ample security for them. I believe if you had had that land system in operation among the small farmers in New Zealand they would have been in a far better position than they are in to-day. Now, what does our Land Act provide? We found it was absolutely necessary that there should be a Land Act passed, and one of the first things we set about doing was to frame a new Act to liberalise the previous existing land laws. That was done in various ways It was done by extending the perpetual leasing system, which provides that a man gets a lease for thirty years and pays a certain rental to the State. At the end of that time his improvements are valued, and what is termed the value of the land with improvements is also valued. He has only to pay a small per centage—4 per cent, on the value of the land minus improvements, and then he gets the lease for another 21 years, and so it goes on and on perpetually, so that practically his tenure is always secure to him. We thought that required extension. We also thought that the village settlement scheme, which, in fact, had been originally proposed by myself when Minister of Lands in 1878, the bill for which had been introduced by Mr Thomson, the member for Clutha, when Minister of Lands in 1879, and which had been elaborated by Mr. Rolleston, should be further extended. We also thought that this should be done, namely, that there should be introduced a provision for people not only having agricultural land on the lease system but that there should be security of tenure given to the small runs. Now you in this district have not had so much to do with runs as we have had to do down South. What do we find happen down South? We find a whole country side extending in one place for forty or fifty miles, all under the domination of one company, sometimes of one foreign company. There will be more than 100,000 acres belonging to one company. A few shepherds may be scattered about, but that was not settlement. We believe that there can be provision made for settlement and provision for the growth of wool; in fact, that along with our increased settlement there wo a Id also come an increase in page 9 our product of wool. It would be well if we could cut up large territories like these into small runs, providing two things : First, that no man should hold more than one small run; second, that we should provide for a certain term of residence to that man—that he should get the value of hi a improvements if he went out of the run, and that he should get certain security of tenure. That was introduced into the small run system, which first became law in 1885, because the provisions of the former Act were unworkable and were not able to be carried out. That was one of the provisions in the Act of 1885. I believe it will be taken advantage of not only in the South Island, but it will be taken advantage of in the North Island. And here comes in the principle which will have to be acted upon, whether a man is a Liberal or a Conservative, in dealing with land. We wish to see that land shall not be monopolised, I hold that the State has to hold the land, and it has so to hold the land that it shall not permit any individual to unduly monopolise it, I regret to say that there is not sufficient liberal sentiment in the Assembly to see the land question carried out properly, and I will give you an example of it for which you can refer to Hansard for 1885, You will find that when we proposed to limit the holding of runs even to 20,000 sheep—that is, outside the small run system—that even in so far as the large runs were concerned, no man and no company should hold Crown land of a larger area than could maintain 20,000 "sheep—that even though that was proposed in the Assembly the Conservative element was so strong as to negative that proposal. Well I am showing you how we have proposed to deal with the land question. We have proposed to deal with this question of small runs by splitting up large areas of country into small runs, believing that that will encourage the production of wool.