GOVERNMENT’S LAND POLICY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2568, 31 July 1909, Page 5

GOVERNMENT’S LAND POLICY.

HON D. BUDDO IN REPLY TO FARMERS’ UNION PROTEST. (Per F roes Association.) DUNEDIN, July 30. In connection with the resolution passed by the Farmers’ Union opposing the Government borrowing money for the purchase of private estates while so much waste land was awaiting settlement, tlio Hon. D. Buddo said, to-day if the resolution meant anything it meant that the balance of Crown and native lands should be put up to auction in order to road and bridge these lands. He ventured to think it would be very difficult to get other settlers who were not present at the meeting to endorse such a policy. Crown and native lands could be sold, but whether that would be a settlement, as. Parliament understood it, was questionable, as Parliament bad always insisted on residence with settlement. To stop borrowing t-o purchase lands for settlement would be quite out of keeping with the. Government policy. The interests of the country were, and for many years must be, in the direction of favoring the continuance of the lands for settlement policy, and it would be regrettable if there was a movement in°tlie direction of interfering with the operation of the Act. . , Mr. Buddo was asked for an opinion on the proposal to tax on the income or the annual value instead of on the unimproved value of land. He thought either of these proposals would be unequal in its incidence. To tax the farmer on his income would bo a most speculative way of assisting because a farmer’s income for two or three years was very frequently a long wav beyond what the capital invested would warrant, while during the recent two years of drought in the South Island many farmers were working at a very great loss. The incidence would, be equally bad if placed on the annual value of the land. They bad yet to find something better than the present system.