3

L—4f.

determined on twelve months' notice without compensation. Eegarding the Litter part of the section providing that the Minister of Lands may determine the lease if he thinks the land is required to be opened to the public, that is a very material alteration of the present law, which is, that the Minister can only determine the lease on twelve months' notice if the land is required for sale as pastoral or agricultural land, but here he is to have the opportunity of opening it to the public. I say at once this is a most dangerous power to place in the hands of a Minister, and it would moreover be a very troublesome one for him. The moment this became law I believe he would be pestered with petitions and with all sorts of statements from the gold fields that the people were famishing for want of land, and were just about to decamp to Australia or somewhere else, unless somebody's run was declared a commonage. That, in my opinion, would be one of the immediate results if the proposal became law. Then coming to section 7 : — "7. The applicant to whom any run shall be allotted under the provisions of this Act shall pay the first three months' rent in advance within one month after the date of the acceptance of his application, and in default of such payment the run shall again be opened for application." This also is a very material change. The present law is that immediately a run is bought at auction the buyer pays down either a year's or six months' rent in advance, according to circumstances, but here any man can apply for a run, and if he gets it, and it is worth his while to occupy it, no doubt he would do so, but if he found it was more convenient not to do so, he might dilly-dally for a month, and in fact might never appear again at the Land Office at all. The Land Office then, finding he did not appear to pay his rent, the thing would go by default, and the buyer* in such a case would not forfeit a penny, although putting the department to much bother and trouble, and wasting a valuable month or two of public time. I think, therefore, that, if the application-system were to become law, any person making an application should deposit with it a half-year's rent, to be forfeited if he did not take up the run on it being balloted to him. The first part of section 8 reads : —■ "8. Section one hundred and twenty-six of " The Land Act, 1877," is hereby repealed." Section 126 is to the effect that leases may be transferred. The object of this part of section Bis clearly to obviate difficulties which may arise under section 7, for if section 126, empowering transfer, were not repealed, it would create a crop of speculators who would go to ballot on the chance of getting a run, and then if they got one they could go about during the month before any payment was required, trying to sell their bargain, or trying to make the present holder give them a bonus to leave him alone and take the transfer of the new lease from them. Then in section 8 a proposed new system of transfer is introduced :— "The interest in a run held under any license.may be transferred to the Land Board only, and to no other body or person, by writing, attested by a Justice, and at such price or sum as arbitrators appointed by the Board and the person making such transfer respectively previously to such transfer have fixed: Provided that such last-mentioned person shall be liable for any rent due at the time of the transfer." The proviso meant this : that the Land Board should be the party to receive the transfer. To it alone can the lessee hand over the run. And what is the Board to do with the runs when it gets them ? " The run or runs so transferred shall thereafter be dealt with in like manner as other runs under this Act, consideration being had by the Land Board in fixing the amount of rent to the sum paid to the person who transferred the run to the Board." Now a considerable number of difficulties would come in here. First of all, the Board is a judicial body and has no money. Then it appears that, even if it nad the money to pay the outgoing tenant, the sum so paid is not to be received back again from the incoming tenant, but he is only to pay rent or interest on the sum ; so it would be a rather losing concern. For instance, take the case of the Otago runs. With these runs there is the responsibility of paying for improvements to the amount of three years' assessment. Supposing the buyer of one of these runs paid the outgoing holder £800 for improvements, and in two years' time resolved to transfer it to the Board, he would then be entitled to receive from the Board this £800. Very well, the Board having got the £800 from the Government we will say, and paid it to the outgoing tenant, the incoming tenant, it would appear, is not to repay it to the Board. The Board is only to take it into account in fixing the amount of rent for the new tenant; in other words, this £800 is to be, as it were, capitalized and added to the value of the land, and the new tenant is to pay interest, as it may be called, on it. That is my interpretation of t'je section as it stands in the Bill. I may say this is contrary to the whole spirit and principle of the Laud Act, for in dealing with Crown lands the law gives the Government this position with purchasers or lessees : There are the public lands —you may take them, improve them, do what you like with them, and when your lease expires your interest will be preserved, as far as the Government can preserve it, by your successor having to pay you for what improvements you have done. But the Government stand on one side and you have no claim against it. The Government has no money-responsibility for improvements effected by a tenant. And let me say that, from what I see in the ad ministration of Government matters, that is an extremely wise principle, because one of the most disagreeable and difficult parts of a Government's business is to fend off inordinate money-claims lor compensation on all sorts of pretexts; in other words, to keep people's hands out of the public purse. Here is section 9:— " 9. If there bo no applicant for any run which has been opened for application, the Board may reduce the amount of the rent, and the run shall be again opened to application after notice of the same shall have been given in mannerflhereinbefore provided, and so on from time to time until the license of the said run shall have been applied for and granted." That is pretty much the same as the present law. If the Board offers land by auction and it does not go off, it is assumed that it was assessed too high, and it is offered again at a reduced rate. But according to my interpretation of the wording of this Bill the land would have to be advertised for another six months if it did not go off the first time. That is the interpretation I put upon the wording, though I may be wrong.