I move:—"That the Bill be now read a Second Time." This Bill is a very short one and should not give rise to very much discussion. Section 1 provides for the appointment of limited administrators for the purpose of enabling the Land Commission to dispose of a large number of holdings they have on hands, particularly in congested counties. Section 2 gives the Land Commission power to fix the standard purchase annuity for non-judicial holdings automatically. The remaining sections of the Bill provide for the acquisition of the fishing rights by the Land Commission in connection with land vested under the Act of 1923, with the object, among others, of enabling the Land Commission, in accordance with Section 1 of the Act of 1903, to sell fishing rights in particular cases to tenant purchasers.
Section 1 is intended to obviate the difficulty and delay which are often caused in the vesting of new or re-arranged holdings on the C.D.B. and Land Commission estates, owing to the fact that the original tenant or registered owner of a holding has died and there is no legal representative to him with whom the Land Commission can enter into the necessary agreements. The Land Commission consider that power should be given to them in such cases to appoint a limited administrator to the deceased tenant or owner for the purpose of consolidating or exchanging holdings. There are before the Land Commission at present a considerable number of cases of migration for the purpose of relieving congestion in which proceedings were commenced by the late C.D.B. and which cannot be completed under the existing machinery owing to defective title of the occupier of the lands proposed to be taken. The general case is that of an occupier who paid the annuity in respect of a registered holding to which he has not a legal title, he not having obtained a grant of administration to the estate or proved the will, if any, of his predecessor in occupation and registered his title at the Land Registry. The practice of the C.D.B. was to take possession of the intended migrant's original holding, making temporary lettings of it to the intended allottees and to put him in occupation of the new holding under a grazing or other temporary agreement. The result in the cases referred to being that these temporary arrangements have continued for a great many years and the Land Commission are as far as ever away from the stage at which they could effect a re-sale of the migrant's original holding and the sale to him of the new holding. Experience has shown that it is almost impossible to get these migrants to incur the legal and other costs involved in order to obtain the grant of administration or otherwise procure registration.
Perhaps if I quote a typical case it would help to show the difficulties that the Land Commission have to meet in dealing with such cases. A tenant, A, entered into an agreement with the C.D.B. upon a certain date in the year 1917 to exchange his holding for a new parcel. The Board at once put four allottees into occupation of the holding under lettings for temporary convenience, and the tenant A was given a new holding under a grazing agreement. On investigation of the title to A's holding it was discovered that his mother, since deceased, was the registered owner. From 1917 up to the present day. the C.D.B at first, and the Land Commission subsequently, have been endeavouring to get the tenant A to clear his title and to get himself registered as the owner of his old holding, so that he might execute a conveyance of it to the Land Commission, but he has ignored all our requests and, until his title is made good, the exchange cannot be effected of the old holding and the new parcels vested in the intended purchasers or migrants.
The Land Commission have power under Section 46 of the Land Act of 1923 to migrate tenants even though their titles to the holdings from which they are migrated are not registered in the Registry of Deeds, or are not legally correct. In such cases we have power to transfer the burdens appertaining to the old holding to the new holding.
Sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 deal with fishing rights. Section 45 of the 1923 Act provides that fishing rights which are appurtenant to lands vesting in the Land Commission under the Act shall also vest in the Land Commission. It will be observed from a reading of this section that these fishing rights vest by right of the statute, and no action of the Land Commission is required to effect the vesting. At first sight this would appear to be a very easy and effectual method of dealing with such rights, but in practice it has been demonstrated that it is very difficult to say in any particular case what rights really have so vested in the Land Commission. Section 45 does not define "appurtenant," and the position is that when lands have vested the fishing rights, if appurtenant, have vested, and if not "appurtenant" have not vested. There is no provision in the Act of 1923 or the Act of 1927 by which the Land Commission could declare that fishing rights have vested, and if such a declaration were made it would not, as the law stands at present, have the effect of vesting the rights, though the rights, if appurtenant, have vested by statute, according to the interpretation of Section 45 of the Act of 1923. Section 41 of the Act of 1927 makes provision for the sale by the Land Commission to tenant purchasers of fishing rights in any rivers or waters adjoining or intersecting the holdings purchased by them at such price, payable by means of purchase annuities as the Land Commission may consider reasonable, such annuities to be consolidated with the land purchase annuities of the holdings. This section does not use the word "appurtenant," but implies that the appurtenant rights within the meaning of Section 45 of the Act of 1923 comprise fishing rights in adjoining and intersecting rivers and waters. The meaning of the word "appurtenant" was the subject of a legal decision in the courts recently, the effect of which was that a right appurtenant to a holding must mean in law some right in connection with the enjoyment of the holding, and could not be extended to include the right to property which was separated therefrom and not enjoyed by the tenant or necessary for the enjoyment of his holding. This decision, in fact, means that the word "appurtenant" should not have been used in Section 45 of the Act of 1923, or, if used, it should have been defined so as to include the rights referred to in Section 41 of the Act of 1927. As the law stands, only those fishing rights which were appurtenant and which were previously enjoyed by the tenant can be considered to vest in the Land Commission as appurtenance to tenanted land.
There is one very important point connected with fishing rights which the experience of the Land Commission proves to require legislation. Fishing rights sometimes extend beyond the confines of the lands which have vested in the Land Commission; such rights, under no construction of the word, could be held to be appurtenant, and so could not vest automatically in the Commission, and the Commission are not empowered to acquire such rights voluntarily. In cases such as these, it might destroy the value of these rights altogether if part of them vest in the Land Commission automatically, and the rest of them do not vest and cannot be acquired by agreement. It is proposed, therefore, in Section 5 of the Bill to give the Land Commission power to purchase by agreement extraneous or non-appurtenant fishing rights in order to avoid destroying them by the vesting only of part of them.
Sections 3, 4, and 5 are really designed for the purpose of defining the word "appurtenant" in such manner as to make it clear what rights will and what rights will not vest in the Land Commission, and in so defining them the expressions used in the Land Act, 1927, are incorporated, and the word "appurtenant" is given a wider meaning so as to include all fishing rights owned by the vendor of the lands. The Land Commission is to declare in each case what rights as so defined have vested, so that the tenant need not be in any doubt hereafter, when these rights are being disposed of, as to what rights are actually vested in him, and power is also sought by the Land Commission to determine whether or not any particular rights should or should not be declared. Powers are also sought in Section 5 to acquire by agreement extraneous fishing rights, where such acquisition is necessary to the enjoyment or user of appurtenant rights. The two remaining sections are purely formal.