Before I come to the main point I want to raise, I should like to say just one word in regard to a matter that apparently has been disposed of already, i.e. the Bultfontein case. There is one additional point which has not been touched on at all in relation to the Bultfontein case, which I think all of us will agree did not have as fruitful a result as one was entitled to expect. There is, however, another aspect of the case, leaving aside the necessity for an inquiry which the hon. the Prime Minister has turned down, which has not been touched at all, and I want to raise it now, and that is the human aspect of this case. Up to now nobody has said anything about the families of the people concerned, in particular the widow and family of the man who was killed in the course of that case and the case of the man who was in fact ill treated but survived the ordeal.

I want to ask the hon. Prime Minister what the Government intends doing about the human aspect of the Bultfontein case. It has not been possible to make full investigations, but there was an article in a recent issue of Drum which gives us the information that the man who was killed, Izak Magaise, left a widow and two small children and that this woman is entirely dependent now on her own earnings, which, if the report is correct, is in the neighbourhood of R4 a month as a domestic servant, out of which she has to support herself and two children, a baby and a child of two. The man who was assaulted, the other man, has been told that he has to leave the farm on which he and his family were living as long as he was employed on that farm. He has been dismissed from employment. I want to ask the hon. the Prime Minister to give serious consideration to the making of an ex gratia payment both to the widow of Magaise and to the man Maketla, who was the witness in the case and who was assaulted. I think this is the very least that the Government can do to at least show some compassion in this case, apart from the legal aspect of it and the facts of the regrettable incident which occurred in that case and the regrettable publicity which our country has had as a result of it. I think this would have two very good effects. First of all, generally speaking, it would have a good effect in the country itself to show that there is a human aspect which is the concern of this Government, apart from the legality of the case. I would say that any ex gratia payment should be at least sufficient to compensate the widow for the loss of the main income-earner of the family, and certainly to compensate for pain and suffering in the other case. It should be sufficient to make it appear that the Government is taking a generous view of this side of the case. The other fact of course is that this will have a very good effect in offsetting the deplorable image which has been created of South Africa abroad. I can think of nothing at this juncture, save the proposal which the hon. the Prime Minister has unfortunately turned down and that is the appointment of a full-scale commission of inquiry, but I can think of nothing which could do a better service to South Africa than an action like this on the part of the Government. I sincerely hope that the hon. the Prime Minister will, together with the Minister of Justice, consider this matter and give us an opinion on it as soon as possible.

I just want to correct one incorrect statement made by the hon. the Prime Minister in his reply earlier on the question of the appointment of a commission of inquiry in Great Britain. The hon. Prime Minister assumed, because I stated that the British Prime Minister was expected to appoint a commission of inquiry to go into the case of one young man in Scotland who was assaulted by two policemen, that an inquiry had not in fact taken place.

No, I took your word for it.

I am glad about that, because in fact a commission was appointed two days after British Members of Parliament asked for it, and it reported a month later.

I want to come to the main point that I want to make and it is tied up with the first point, and that is something to assist us to help to improve our image in the outside world. I believe that it is something that concerns the hon. the Prime Minister very much indeed. Despite the fact that he is always telling the outside world that South Africa will not make adaptations, that she will continue to go it her own way, I believe that the hon. the Prime Minister, who is a good psychologist, realizes that “kragdadigheid” may fulfil a certain psychological need up to a point, but after that, when it comes to a clear case of isolation, nobody feels comfortable in those circumstances, and South Africans do noit enjoy the isolation any more than anybody else. The hon. member for Mayfair (Dr. Luttig) yesterday actually in his speech bore out the point that our isolation is not a fact that is welcomed by the Government or by the people of this country, but his way of disposing of it was to tell us in fact that we are not isolated, and the hon. the Prime Minister made this point as well—that we were isolated only on one count, the political count, because of our racial policies. Well, that amounts to saying that we are perfectly healthy, but unfortunately we have got cancer. Now obviously all of this is because of our racial policies, but how the hon. member for Mayfair can say that South Africa is not isolated is beyond me. It shows that he just does not know what has happened to South Africa in the last few years. I want to remind him what indeed has happened to South Africa “just because of politics”, as he puts it. I leave aside the stronger and stronger resolutions which have been taken at the United Nations, culminating last year in the unanimous resolution that, inter alia, a committee of experts should be appointed to go into the whole question of South Africa, and leaving apart even the fact that sanctions have been introduced by certain of the African states, and leaving aside even the Conference of Addis Ababa and the Conference of Foreign Ministers of the African States calling for still greater sanctions against South Africa and the denial of landing rights to planes coming to or going from South Africa …

What did you think of the Committee of Experts?

Let me remind the hon. member of what has happened, all because of politics. Due to the unfriendly attitude arising out of our politics, which means in fact our racial policies, we have had to withdraw from the I.L.O.; we have been told that we cannot take any part in the work of the Economic Commission for Africa until we change our racial policies; we have withdrawn from the Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa; we have been refused visas to attend the Council for Science in Africa; we are out of the World Health Organization; we are excluded from any regional meeting held in Africa by the Food and Agricultural Organization; we have been asked to withdraw from the United Nations Conference on Tourism; and our invitation to attend the Olympic Games in Japan later this year has also been withdrawn. We have just been saved from the same fate at the conference of the International Red Cross in Geneva, because—and this is an interesting thing—the delegation was multi-racial. Which shows how little indeed it takes to get the world to giving us a breathing space, to stop ejecting us from these world councils. The very fact that the delegation we sent to the International Red Cross at Geneva was multi-racial prevented us from being asked to leave that conference. And we have recently been saved expulsion from the World Football Association; there have been resolutions passed in England by Equity, the theatre organization, preventing members of it from coming to South Africa unless they are allowed to perform before multi-racial audiences. Sir, if this is not isolation, I wonder what the hon. member for Mayfair thinks is isolation.

How is it that foreign capital is coming to this country?

Foreign capital is not being invested in this country because the world agrees with our racial policies, but because it is considered that we are a very good investment risk, and I could not agree more pro tem. But nobody in his righful mind imagines that we are going to be a long-term security as things are developing. Hon. members opposite may think they can hold the situation by force for a long time, and I agree they can hold it by force for a long time, but how many hon. members there think that they are ensuring the security of the next generation in South Africa by their attitude? I do not believe there is one who in his heart of hearts believes that the present security of South Africa is going to last even until their own children’s lifetime. [Time limit.]

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote No. 5,—“Lands”, R1,760,000,

I should like to draw the attention of the Minister of Lands to a matter which affects us considerably, in the Eastern Province, particularly the farmers concerned in these parts, and that is the question of the brackish water in certain parts of the Eastern Province—not the water as such, but how it affects the Minister’s Department. The people in those parts of the Eastern Province have now been waiting for a long time for something to be done about the matter. Many of those people, who are citrus farmers, have found that their trees were dying and that many cash crops suffered considerably as a result of droughts, and since May 1961 they have been afflicted with the brackish water emanating from the Beervlei Dam. They were at first promised water from the Kouga Dam, so that they could get some other water on their land. Subsequently it was decided to buy out those people, and that is the matter I should like to raise with the hon. the Minister to-day. I am referring to the farmers along the Sand River and the Almmansrivier. I understand a promise was made to those people by the Department that their farms would be valued and that officials have already visited those parts to make certain appraisements of their land. Now I should like to hear from the Minister what progress has been made. According to representations made to this side of the House, the agriculturists there are very anxious now that something should be done about their problems. They have been waiting since last year to hear whether they are going to be bought out and what prices they are to be paid for their land. At the present time those people do not know which way to turn. Those people ought not to be left in uncertainty any longer, and I am afraid that many of those farmers are beginning to lose patience. I believe the Minister and his Department have now reached the stage where they ought to dispose of this matter. We on this side of the House are entitled to inquire what is wrong at the moment. Why can the matter not be regarded as urgent? We infer this particularly from the correspondence those people have addressed to this side of the House. When farmers have to be bought out for some reason, we feel it is essential that it should immediately be regarded as very urgent. We know that a good deal of time necessarily has to elapse from time to time before people know what they are to receive for their land, but I am afraid that latterly these matters have been taking too long, not only in regard to these irrigation schemes, but I also know of others where people are becoming very dissatisfied because they have to wait a very long time before they know what their position will be after having been bought out by the State. One has to remember that these people usually have to make other plans for the future, and the time that elapses between the decision of the State and the actual implementation of the decision is much too long and causes great inconvenience and concern to the other parties concerned in such a matter. That is one of the matters I should like to bring to the Minister’s attention under this Vote.

I once heard someone ask another person: “Why is your nose so long?” The reply was, “Because I do not poke it into the affairs of other people”. It seems to me that the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher) does not have much to keep him occupied in his constituency, because he makes a point of raising matters here that do not concern him, in regard to which nobody has asked him to act, which do not fall within his constituency, and about which he in any event knows nothing. The hon. member came along here this afternoon and suggested that there were a number of people below the Beervlei Dam who were being neglected. Let us state the true position here. When it was discovered that the water of the Beervlei Dam was causing alkalinity in the Gamtoos Valley through irrigation in the Karoo, those people registered their complaints through the normal channels; they came to me, deputations were sent, and we met the Ministers concerned on various occasions, both the Minister of Lands and the Minister of Water Affairs, who were concerned with this matter. The Farmers’ Association and the party organization were in constant contact with me, they received attention, they made recommendations to the Minister, some recommendations which the Minister could accept and others which he could not. One recommendation, for instance, was that there should be no irrigation from the Beervlei Dam. In other words, the dam had to be kept open and every time any water flowed into it, it was to be permitted to run down to the sea. Of course the Minister could not accept that recommendation, because there are several thousands of morgen of land in the Karoo under irrigation, and the dam is a great boon to those people. Then an offer was made which was regarded by the Farmers’ Association and the interested parties there as a solution to this problem. It was resolved to make these people an offer for their land and then to buy them out. I may say in passing that only a matter of 400 morgen of irrigable land and about 40 owners are involved. But it does not follow that because the number is small the interests of that community can or should be neglected. The Government decided to have the land valued and if agreement was reached, to buy out the land there. The true state of affairs is that members of the Land Board and officials of the Department have already visited the area to make valuations.

I said so, did I not?

The hon. member did not say that. He was silent on that. He said no attention had been given to the matter and the people were being neglected.

I have here every word I said.

I say the hon. member did not say so. He was silent on that because it did not suit him …

You are now falling from the frying pan into the fire.

I am not in the fire; not in the position in which the hon. member usually finds himself. The position is that they have in fact visited the area, but because of the rains they were stopped from continuing with the valuations. In the meantime a member of the Land Board died and a new appointment was made. Did the hon. member mention that? No, he did not. But the people have been assured that valuations will be resumed shortly. I should like to say, moreover, to the hon. member who is so kind and helpful in always wanting to help me to look after the interests of my constituency, that not all the people intend to sell out. There are quite a number of people who still have their own water supply, and who will still remain there. But I can assure the hon. member that full attention has been given to this matter, and that when he raises this matter it is probably because a few United Party supporters have approached him, and the hon. member is, as is usual with them, trying to scavenge wherever possible.

Arising out of what the hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo) had said, it will be a sorry day for members of this House if they have to be as parochial as he apparently wants to be.

Mr. Chairman, because of the increasing difficulties as far as the acquisition of land is concerned, I want to ask the hon. Minister if he will not consider the setting up of a committee for the purpose of going into the question of the replacement of farmers who are being uprooted from their land as the result of releasing scheduled areas by the Department of Native Affairs? I think a committee from the Department of Lands, Bantu Administration and the Department of Agricultural Technical Services might perform a service if such a committee could be set up with a view to re-establishing those farmers. The hon. Minister is well aware that there are going to be many of them in the Eastern Province, and I should say that no less than 200 of them have to be replaced as a result of the recent scheduling. Mr. Chairman, these are small farmers, original settlers, and they are good farmers. They have been successful in the small enterprises that they have. What they are paid out for their smallholdings when they are displaced is insufficient to equip them for the purpose of purchasing larger propositions, such as exist because no settlements are to be found in the Eastern Province, and as things are at present, I find that there is nothing south of the Orange River where they can be absorbed. I want to put it to the hon. Minister that he should set up this committee to investigate the circumstances and the developments that will take place in the near future, with a view to those men being absorbed in some reasonable settlement. An unfortunate state of affairs exists and I think it warrants my telling the hon. Minister that this committee is an urgent necessity. These farmers who are to be displaced were given the assurance that at no far distant date from the time their farms were released, they would be bought out. We find that some years have elapsed between that period and now and they have still not been bought out. Many of those farmers, in view of the undertakings that were given to them, took options on other properties, but they have had to let those options lapse, and they have had to pay for many of those options. So the Minister can see that difficulty has arisen which requires attention from the three Departments I have mentioned. But there is some alternative to that. I understand that the Department of Bantu Administration is to release certain areas from the schedules, such as Scheduled Area No. 34, and I understand that Newlands and St. Lukes are to be released, and the occupants of those areas will be taken to the Danzani or Potsdam areas. That being the case, I want to put it to the Minister whether it is not possible to bring about some exchange in the accommodation of some of those people who belong to a White ethnic group who have their own church and their own language, which differs from the other languages in this country. Would it not be possible to arrange between those three Departments that at least some of those people are absorbed in the areas that are to be released for the purpose of White occupation? One does not know how long it will take, but such a committee may be able to guide those individuals in the direction of what they can expect in future. The Minister knows what this all means. From the time an area becomes a released area until the time it is bought that man does not know what to do; he does not know when the farm will be purchased and where he can be absorbed again. I think a committee on those lines would make a great contribution towards solving those problems.

I really wish to link up with what the hon. member for King William’s Town (Mr. Warren) has said. I should like to raise the same matter, namely the question of the clearance of Black spots and the placing of Whites in those areas. At the present time the position is that if a Black spot is eliminated, where Bantu are living within a White area, or a small scheduled or released area which de facto but not de jure is a Black spot, but actually is one because it is surrounded by a White area—then when such an area is cleared, compensatory land must be acquired by the Department of Bantu Administration. Then ordinarily the land of White farmers is acquired for that purpose. I should like to urge that those White farmers whose land is acquired, and to which the Bantu are taken, should be given preference to that Black spot which now becomes a White area. But the farmers who have to surrender their land for the purposes of the elimination of that Black spot have no preference in respect of that land. I am pleading that those White farmers should be met and be given preference to that land where the Black spots are eliminated. I do not think a commission is required for that. I think it is quite possible to do something of this nature with the co-operation of the Department of Lands and the Department of Bantu Administration.

However, I should like to object to one thing the hon. member for King William’s Town has said. He said certain promises have been made to the farmers in regard to certain areas which are now becoming released areas.

I do not know what released areas he is referring to, for there has not been a proclamation of such areas recently save in the Acts of this year and last year, and I am unaware of any promises that have been made. Take the area of Mdanzani which was proclaimed a released area last year. All those farmers are very small farmers, and most of them are employed at East London and elsewhere, but they have a small farm at Mdanzani and no promises have been made to them. The areas previously released were declared released areas a long time ago. So the hon. member for King William’s Town is mistaken if he says those people are in suspense, for then they must have been in suspense since 1936. Therefore the picture he has painted is not quite exact.

However, I should like to revert to another point raised by the hon. member. It is true there are farmers who are affected by the clearance. I should also like to plead for them in the sense that they should receive preference on settlements and should be placed there. These are people such as those at Mdanzani and I could mention various other places where small farmers particularly are being affected, and I ask that some concessions should be made to them to place them elsewhere. It is not very clear where that “elsewhere” is at the present time, but I should like to urge that when the Orange River scheme is completed, those farmers should be given consideration, for they are in fact rendering a service to the nation, because they surrender their land to implement the policy of the Government. As regards the clearance of these Black spots, we are at the present time faced with a great problem, in the Transvaal where there are large Black spots, particularly in Western Transvaal. We do not know where we are to place those Bantu.

They have to be on the Highveld. We could place them in the Cape, but we cannot get compensatory land for them in the Cape, because the Transvaal must find its own compensatory land. Now I should like to plead that if those farmers, in the Cape for instance, surrender their land for these purposes, they should receive preference to the land evacuated by Bantu in the Transvaal, and that we should acquire Transvaal compensatory land elsewhere in the Lowveld.

I want to associate myself with the hon. member for King William’s Town in so far that we on this side of the House cannot see why we cannot discuss matters which happen to be in another man’s constituency. We on this side represent the voters of the whole of the Republic, and we are interested in all the matters affecting the Republic, and I want to congratulate the hon. member for Port Elizabeth in bringing matters to the attention of the hon. the Minister which are of national importance.

I want to raise a matter under the Minister’s Vote which is of importance to a small section of our community. A land surveyor takes about 6½ years to qualify after leaving school.

There is a Vote which immediately follows this one, and land surveyors fall under that Vote.

I do not think I can raise my point under that Vote, and therefore I am trying to raise it under the Minister’s salary. No land surveyor can be appointed to the Surveyor-General’s Office or to the Trigonometrical Survey unless he has had at least five years’ practical experience in private practice. We find that the average time they spend there is about nine years. Comparing him with a similar position, that of Assistant Registrar, we find that the registrar, from when he leaves school and joins the service, contributes to the pension fund R12/700, and the land surveyor contributes R12,360, virtually the same amount as the Assistant Registrar over the same period, but the pension that the Assistant Registrar can get is R2,555, whereas the pension a land surveyor can get is only R1,631. I feel that a very strong case can be made out that the five years a land surveyor spends in private practice should be added to his services for pension purposes. It may be against the Act as it is, but it is a tremendous handicap to them, as appears from the small pension they get compared with other officers in a similar position in the State’s service. I think the Minister should seriously consider including that period for pension purposes, because it is a compulsory period. The State will not appoint them unless they have had at least five years’ experience, and it is valuable experience for them and I think they should have that experience, but at the same time it is only fair that that period should be counted in for pension purposes.

Then I notice there is a new item under “K”, National Parks, maintenance of border posts. I should like to have some information on that.

I hasten to bring to the notice of the Minister a matter affecting my constituency before a member of the United Party raises it. [Laughter.] The position is that in the northern provinces there is a tremendous land hunger, particularly in the agricultural areas, and there is, in my constituency, a large piece of vacant land. State land, Summerville in the Bultfontein district, which is eventually to be made available under the Land Settlement Act, and that land has been lying there unused since 1956, when the provincial administration vacated it. Judging from the tremendous interest and the inquiries I have received in connection with that land, there is a very great demand for that land, particularly by the younger farmers who do not own land. That is why I should like to appeal to the Minister to expedite matters, through his Department, to have that land made available. I am aware of the problems there were in the past, why the land cannot be made available as yet, and also that at the present time work of preparation is being performed, but I wonder whether all this cannot be expedited so that that land may be made available. There is a tremendous demand for that land, and perhaps it is necessary to expedite the matter.

I would like to bring one or two matters to the notice of the Minister. They are in connection with settlements, where in many cases there are Coloured people who are trying to farm. There are also other cases where Whites are trying to make a living on very small plots. Lip and down the Orange River there are numbers of small farms, and plots, of a size which in my humble opinion cannot give a living to any man who farms them as separate units. I believe that the Government has taken some action, particularly in regard to the Coloured community, by appointing a commission of inquiry into conditions along the Orange River. Although that aspect of it may not fall strictly within the purview of the Minister, I suggest that he might give some consideration to better use being made of our one permanent asset, the land. There is no doubt that the practice in bygone years of allowing minor sub-divisions of land has reached proportions where the sizes of the plots have become so small that a man finds himself trying to eke out a living on one morgen. There are other settlements in my constituency—and here I can speak with comfort and without tramping on the corns of anybody who happens to have the same problem in his constituency, because my constituency comprises half the Cape Province. There is, e.g. at Douglas, a number of plots known as Die Erwe. For some years, these people have been having a tremendous struggle to make a living. It enjoyed the attention of the Minister of Agriculture when he was there, and also of the hon. member for Kimberley (South). May I add my plea to the pleas of those people that the Minister might give some consideration to the use being made of that type of settlement. I think it would be a great step forward in the advance of this country agriculturally if the smallholders, who are really the farmers who are suffering so badly and who find themselves financially embarrassed when their crops fail or pests arrive or an early frost comes along, could be assisted. It would be something constructive and it would put a new look on our activities. Various commissions have dealt with the sub-division of land, but I do not think the problem has been tackled aggressively in order to find a solution. I suggest that a decision should be made as to what the minimum size of a plot should be on which a man is expected to make a living from agriculture, and that falls within the province of the Minister.

The second point I should like to touch upon is that of young men trying to get on the land to farm. I know quite well that there is a scheme to assist young men to become farmers, but the limit at the moment is R20,000 which is advanced by the Lands Department, and what size farm can a man buy for that money to-day? If it happens to be a plot on a settlement, he can probably survive for a while, but if he tries to farm intensively he is in great difficulty because of the cost of his implements and his running expenses. I believe that half the reason for the drift of the farming population to the towns is due to the fact that the young people on the farms, and especially on the settlements, cannot see any future on the small plots parcelled out for their use. I just wonder whether the Minister could give some attention to that and possibly find ways and means, not so much to make it easier, because the terms under the Land Settlement Act are very generous, but to the fact that the amount of money made available is totally inadequate to purchase a piece of land which can be farmed successfully. I think it is well known that those who move around the countryside visiting people with an eye to things other than farming, in connection with elections, see things with an objective eye, and I do not think it can be said that the young farmers going on to the land at the moment are really a success, for the simple reason that I do not think they can ever get rich there. They can make a living or eke out an existence, but that is all. Therefore I commend those two points to the Minister.

This is probably the last opportunity we shall have to address the Minister as the Minister of Lands under this Vote, and therefore I should like, as a member of the National Parks Board, to convey to the Minister our special thanks and appreciation, and to pay tribute to him for the exceptional services rendered by him as the Minister supervising the activities of the National Parks Board. He devoted particular attention to our National Parks and he is imbued with a profound love of nature, and he has gone out of his way to assist the Parks Board in carrying on its work. We are very grateful to him for that, and we trust that he will for many years retain that interest in the welfare of our National Parks, and that he will be able in future also to make his contribution to the promotion of this matter.

Under the guidance of the hon. the Minister there has been expansion. For many years no new parks were proclaimed but in recent years, while the Minister has been Minister of Lands, there has been expansion. Recently the Plaat Forest Reserve was placed under the control of the board as a National Park, and the Tzitzikamma coastal area from Storms River as far as the Eerste River mouth will in future also be a National Park, and shortly the Aughrabies Waterfall will probably also be proclaimed a National Park. In addition there has been the Golden Gate Park in the Free State, in respect of which the board is indebted to the Provincial Administration of the Free State which acquired the land. The Minister is constantly appealed to for financial assistance and much assistance has been given in the form of loans granted to the National Parks Board to continue its work. I should like also to mention the land purchased to expand the Mountain Zebra Park. The mountain zebras will be safe in future. There are also 35 mountain zebras on part of the land purchased and there is the prospect that these mountain zebras (bergkwaggas) will be quite safe for the future too.

I should like to refer briefly to financial matters. We receive from the Government an amount of R100,000 and provision is made for a further R60,000 per annum, but that is to provide for the expenditure of the board in connection with border posts, which really do not fall within the functions of the board. We appreciate the financial assistance, but the board feels it is quite inadequate to provide for its requirements. I should like to refer to the latest financial statements of the board. The Kruger National Park had an income of R444,000, and its expenditure was R397,000. That shows a reasonable profit. Then there is the Addo Elephant Park, where expenditure amounted to R12,000 and revenue R3,000. For the National Bontebok Park expenditure amounted to R5,000 and revenue R145. For the Kalahari Gemsbok Park expenditure amounted to R16,000 and the revenue R8,000. For the Mountain Zebra Park expenditure amounted to R4,000 and the revenue R600. So you see the Kruger National Park is the only one that really shows a profit. All the others are being run at a loss, and the profits of the Kruger Park have to be utilized to subsidize the other parks. It is difficult to expand and develop further because expenditure is so high. I may just mention that in the Kruger National Park alone we have 1,930 miles of fire-breaks which are necessary to protect the Game Reserve which is greatly exposed to the risk of bushfires. You yourself can form an idea of the expense involved in maintaining those fire-breaks. In recent times, as a result of the drought, we had a special water supply programme. During this time 33 boreholes have been sunk successfully, as well as a lot of dry holes. You can imagine the expenditure involved. In the Kruger Game Reserve there is an establishment of 12 European rangers and 167 Bantu rangers, in addition to all the others. That gives you some idea of how much money is required to protect the park. In spite of the fact that the Game Reserve is fenced, we still have to cope with poachers continually. Some of these poachers are continually being captured within the Game Reserve. During the past year no less than 445 wire snares were traced and found. That merely shows how essential those services are. The board incurs great expenditure only to protect the fauna and flora, and therefore I think it is essential that in future provision should be made for a bigger subsidy. If it is not a recurring subsidy, the board in any event feels that when a new park is established a special fund should be made available by way of donation to the board, in order to enable it to effect the initial developments. We are very hard put to it to meet the expenditure connected with the conservation of the fauna and flora. We are very grateful for the assistance that is given, but much more is required to enable the board to perform its functions properly, and we should like to appeal to the Minister to make a final attempt to give us that present before he retires.

The fact that I am rising now does not mean that hon. members must not rise after me, but I find it better to deal with the work piecemeal rather than to wait until the end.

I must thank the hon. member for Nelspruit (Mr. Faurie) very cordially for the very kind words he expressed about me in connection with the National Parks—I am tempted to say the very flattering words he used. I can assure him that although undeserving, I greatly appreciate what he has said. However, I must remind him that as an old politician it has always been my experience that when a man begins to praise you, he immediately thereafter asks you for something, and I am very glad to see that the hon. member has not disappointed me, for he had hardly finished praising me than he asked me for money. I think all of us appreciate the value of the National Parks. They are of tremendous value to us. The main show window of course is the Kruger Game Reserve, mainly because it was there with all the animals when the park was established, and it was only necessary to effect improvements. Most people went there because the game was there already. Now that park of course produces the most revenue and shows a profit, and the other smaller parks do not show a profit, according to the manner in which the hon. member calculates it. They are the new parks we have established and some of them will perhaps never show a profit. But we cannot regard the National Parks as a lot of small individual parks, the finances of each of which should be administered separately. We have to regard our National Parks as a whole, and if perchance we produce a larger turnover and make a profit at one, then it does not follow that all that profit should be used for that particular park; it should also be used for the development of new parks. I hope the board will realize that they do not have a separate duty to every individual park; they have a collective duty to all the parks together. As regards the hon. member’s request for still more money for the parks, I just wish to tell him that I think the parks have been treated very well in recent times. I think that the provision made by various governments and bodies for their development by way of loans for the development of roads, etc., although in the opinion of the National Parks Board they may not have been adequate, in any event perhaps was almost too much in the opinion of the Minister of Finance. I sit between the National Parks Board and the Minister of Finance, and on the one hand I must try to comply with the demands of the National Parks Board but on the other hand I have to appease the Minister of Finance. I think I have been fairly successful in that role I have to play between the two. But I should like to give the hon. member the assurance that the Government appreciates the inestimable value of our National Parks in South Africa, and that the Government will always treat our National Parks generously in future.

Just before the hon. member spoke, the hon. member for Karoo (Mr. Eden) spoke. The hon. member for Karoo has not been in this House long, and perhaps I should forgive him for some of the things he said here.

Under the wrong Vote.

No, he spoke to the proper Vote, but the things he referred to are things of which he apparently has no knowledge. He probably has no knowledge of what the Department does. He referred to one particular difficulty we have at Douglas. The hon. member for Kimberley (South) and my Department have been busy for years trying to improve the position of those people at Douglas. The difficult position they are in is not something of which he has now suddenly become aware. But the hon. member for Karoo has come here with a lot of enthusiasm and he wants to show what he can do. He referred to the uneconomic sub-division of land along the Orange River. Sir, that no longer happens. It has not been happening for years; it cannot happen any longer because if land is sub-divided into uneconomic holdings, we do not give that land any water, and it then renders it impossible to sub-divide land into uneconomic holdings. No land on the Orange River settlements has been sub-divided into uneconomic holdings for years and years. We are doing the very opposite; we are engaged upon the converse process. Where there have been uneconomic holdings before we had the power to put a stop to sub-division into uneconomic holdings, we have now for Some years—and with a great deal of success—been engaged on acquiring those smallholdings and then using that land to extend other economic holdings in the immediate vicinity. That process has been in operation for a long time. If the hon. member had only approached my Department, we could have given him so much information about it that it would have been unnecessary for him to have made his speech at all. The hon. member says the R20,000 we are giving people is not sufficient to buy a farm. I do not know whether he is familiar with the various schemes under which people are assisted to enable them to acquire land. This loan of R20,000 falls under one of our schemes; it is the so-called Section 20 scheme or the one-tenth contribution scheme. Under that scheme we assist individuals with a loan of not more than R20,000 to buy land but we expect him to have a little capital too. This system is intended to assist people who do have a little capital but not sufficient to buy a farm. It is nonsense to say that for R20,000 you cannot buy an agricultural farm on which you can make a living. The hon. member should come and see the thousands of cases where we have given assistance under this scheme. I am not saying there have not been some failures, but where there have been failures, they usually were attributable to the fact that the man and not the farm was not good enough, for when we assist a man under that scheme we see to it that he receives an economic holding, otherwise we simply do not help him. The Department has helped thousands of people under this one-tenth contribution scheme who to-day are very successful farmers. Those are the people who, as the hon. member has put it, are eking out a miserable existence. Then we have other schemes under which we assist people who have nothing, and that is on closer settlements under irrigation farms. If a person who does not possess a bean satisfies us that he is a good farmer, we place him on an irrigation farm in a closer settlement and it costs him nothing. We give him implements and seed and food and everything else, and in the first year he pays back virtually nothing. During the first few years he does not pay any interest on the money. We assist him in every possible way: we give him advice; we help him with his farming operations, and we give him a big enough farm to enable him to make a proper living on it. If the hon. member will come to our office, we will show him what the average income is of the people at Vaalharts, for instance, and he will then see that the living they are making there is not a miserable existence. I think I should introduce the hon. member to the heads of my Department. It will assist him to talk more sensibly when he speaks again. I think he said what he did here merely because he does not possess the requisite knowledge. For instance, he asked why we do not investigate uneconomic holdings in South Africa. But surely he knows that at the moment there is a Select Committee appointed this year, to draft a Bill to prevent this very matter of sub-division into uneconomic holdings in future, not only on irrigation schemes. That Select Committee is sitting at the moment and yesterday I gave them the right to sit in the afternoon even. For all I know they may be sitting this afternoon. The hon. member should go and listen there for a while if he wants to be informed on these matters.

As regards the people at Goedehoop who are afflicted with brackish water, I think the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher) and the hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo) have now decided whose task it is to bring this matter to my notice. I am not interfering there, except to say that I know the people very well, because I have been their Member of Parliament for 30 years. They came to see me about their difficulties, and we have found a solution to those difficulties; it is the only solution there is and that is to buy up that land, but there have been delays. While we were engaged on the valuations there, there was a storm, the kind of storm one gets in those parts, and which can maroon one there for three weeks quite easily unless one gets out before the storm breaks. The people dealing with the valuations had a programme and they could not complete their work, but they are returning there, and this place has one of the highest priorities as regards the purchasing of the land. We are going to do so as soon as we can do so, because what the two hon. members have said here is quite correct, namely that those people can no longer eke out an existence there, except for some of them who get spring Water from the mountain which is not brackish. That water has become brackish as a result of the Beervlei Dam. The people’s farms have become useless, and we shall have to buy out those people as soon as possible. My Department will not delay; they will see to it that it is done as soon as possible.

The hon. member for King William’s Town (Mr. Warren) raised a question which is of considerable importance and that is the question of farms which are expropriated or bought out to be added to Native Trust lands and on the other hand where Native land is bought out in exchange. He wants to know what you are going to do with those Europeans whose land has been bought out to be added to Native Trust land. He says that we ought to give priority to those people in settling them in European areas. The hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman) dealt with the same theme and wanted us to give priority to people whose ground has been bought under more or less similar circumstances. According to the regulations framed under the Land Settlement Act in placing a man on an irrigation scheme, for instance—I am not talking now about the Section 20 scheme—we are supposed to select the man whom we think will be the most successful settler. But we do take into consideration the fact that people who have been forced off the land through no fault of their own but as a result of some act by the Government or even as a result of an act of God, ought to be given special consideration, and we do give them special consideration. As far as the rest of these people are concerned, most of them have a certain amount of capital, and if they have a certain amount of capital we can always help them under the one-tenth scheme, under Section 20. They pay one-tenth of the cost price and we advance them nine-tenths, and we can advance them up to R20,000. We have a number of officers in our Department who deal specially with these cases, and I do not think it is necessary to have a committee to go into this matter because such a committee would only sit sporadically, because sometimes an area is bought out and you can then allocate a number of farms, and then for a long period no further areas are bought out and no farms can be allocated. But we have a special section of our Department which deals with these people and we treat them with very great sympathy. We feel that there is a certain obligation on us to help those people and we do our utmost to do so. We can do it chiefly in two ways; we can do it firstly under Section 20, under the contributory scheme, or under our ordinary irrigation schemes where the man does not have sufficient capital to buy a farm under the contributory scheme.

*The hon. member for Gardens (Mr. Connan) referred to the position of land surveyors. He says that when they join the Department, they must first have five years’ practical service and that then they receive a pension which is less than that of certain other officials in that Department who are not required to have five years’ practical experience, and who may have joined the service immediately after they matriculated. This question of pensions is a very involved matter, as the hon. member knows. I shall refer this matter to the Commissioner of Pensions and ask him to report to me on it, and I shall then see what may be done after reading that report.

The hon. member also asked what is meant by border posts in the National Parks. He probably will realize that two of our parks in any case constitute the. boundaries of the Republic of South Africa. The one has a long boundary along the Portuguese territory, and the other has a fairly long boundary alongside Bechuanaland territory. Formerly there have always been posts in those parks; there were immigration posts and there were posts of the Department of Veterinary Services to see to it that diseases were not carried across the border, and there were various other posts, particularly on the eastern side of the Kruger Game Reserve. There were recruiting stations for recruiting Portuguese Natives for the mines. We felt there was some overlapping between the functions of the various Departments, because a whole lot of Departments were involved. We felt that some of that work could be performed by officials of the National Parks Board. We have now made an arrangement in terms of which they will take over certain functions of other Departments. We shall then make a contribution towards the salaries of the people we station there.

It will not be necessary to have so many officials at one post now. If we have officials from other Departments there, they are not subject to discipline as far as the rules of the National Parks Board are concerned. It is much better to have people there who are officials of the National Parks Board and who are subject to the disciplinary code of the National Parks Board and who can then do this work for the other Departments.

The hon. member for Winburg referred to Summerville. He said that Summerville had been exchanged by the Provincial Administration of the Free State for certain other land, and that it is suitable land for allotment, and he wished to know when we are going to do so. The difficulty there was three-fold. In the first place, gold was discovered, after they had acquired the land, not in the immediate vicinity of Summerville but relatively near Summerville, and the Department of Mines then asked us not to allot that land until such time as prospecting has been completed there. They did not want us to spend money in developing this land into a settlement, only to discover subsequently that gold mines were to be opened there. Prospecting took five years, and so we could do nothing for five years. After the five years had expired, we began to construct two new irrigation dams in the Free State, and we then had to wait for the Department of Water Affairs to see where their canals were to come, for it seemed to us that the canals would go through Summerville, and that a portion of that land would be used for closer settlement, and not for ordinary agricultural purposes. We then had to wait until they had completed their plans and until they could come and show us where the canals were to be situated. The third difficulty we have now is that we cannot select a farm there without having a water supply. We had hoped earlier that we would get water from the dam, but now we are not getting it and we have to sink boreholes. We are now busy boring on those lands and as soon as we strike water we shall allot those farms in holdings. I do not think it will take so long.

May I associate myself and hon. members on this side of the House with the remarks made by the hon. member on the other side who referred to the retirement of the hon. the Minister of Lands. Sir, we on this side wish him many happy years of retirement. May he enjoy them immensely.

I want to go on to correct an impression given here by the hon. member for Frankfort who indicated that Mdanzane and Potsdam were released areas in 1936. They were not. They became released areas the year before last. Sir, those are the circumstances and the hon. member knows it. The areas that I referred to—St. Lukes and Newlands —were scheduled areas in 1936, whereas Mdanzani and Potsdam were never released areas or scheduled areas. However, I leave it at that. None of those hon. gentlemen farming in that area would feel flattered if they were told that they were just town-dwellers living at Potsdam. I want to assure the hon. member that some of the farmers there are amongst the most progressive farmers in the Eastern Province. He would be astounded to see the returns of those farmers who in the early morning take their produce to the early morning market, do a day’s work there and come back to produce the next day’s produce.

There is just one item that I would like to raise with this Minister. The hon. the Minister is being blamed for the lengthy delays that take place after the surveyor first comes along to survey farms which are to be bought ultimately by his Department. May I give him an example. Take the new conservation in the Nahoon. It is nearly two years since the first surveyors came there. Four months after their arrival they had their pegs in and they had completed that survey. Sir, it took six months before anybody went near either of the two farms which are to be submerged. The pipeline has been laid; the surveys have been completed but those men are still sitting there. I know that this does not fall under the Minister’s Department; it falls under the Department of Water Affairs. That, to my mind, is one of the items which I felt should be investigated even if it is investigated by a one-man committee which can go along to those folk and say to them, “We want to purchase your land; it is going to be submerged and we will do so at the earliest possible date.” Sir, do you know that one of the orchards in one of those valleys was burnt out by one of the engineers working on the dam because it has too many snakes? Sir, that sort of thing is going on. His valuators have to come along and value that land. What is the state of that orchard going to be by the time his valuators come along to appriase it? [Interjection.] I know that that is so, but I am asking for a committee consisting of representatives of the two Departments concerned, the Department of Lands and the Department of Water Affairs. Sir, there must be a closer liaison between these two Departments. As a matter of fact, I took a letter to the hon. the Minister but when he told me that it did not fall under him but under the Minister of Water Affairs I had to leave it at that. I have another letter here consisting of six pages of complaints by these two individuals who have never been approached in any shape or form. This is a matter that requires attention, and the Minister of Lands is taking the blame, not the Minister of Water Affairs.

I know the hon. the Minister is not going to like what I am now going to do, but then I shall just have to apologize in advance. Before coming to my next point I should just like to say this in passing: Somebody asked an old man how old he was, and he replied: “Look, I have been here since Table Mountain was that high, and Table Mountain is now so big, so you can imagine how old I am.” Now when the hon. the Minister became Minister of Lands, I was here and I am still here. Vaalharts being the biggest settlement in the southern hemisphere, I think I may safetly say that the hon. the Minister has certainly not been bothered more by any other member under his Lands Vote than by me. Knowing that the Minister is going to retire, I am convinced that I am speaking on behalf of the farmers of Vaalharts when I address a word of thanks to the hon. the Minister this afternoon for the tolerance he has shown during the time he has been Minister of Lands. I cannot say that everybody has been perfectly satisfied, because the Minister would have not been human had he not on occasion had to say “no”, but the Minister has always adopted a very sympathetic attitude during his term of office as Minister of Lands, and I wish to convey to him the thanks of the population of Vaalharts and my own personal thanks too. But I am not going to disappoint him either; I am going to ask him a few things. Sir, committees have repeatedly been appointed to investigate difficulties at Vallharts. There were so many difficulties that had to be overcome. There were the waterlogged holdings; there were the holdings that were too sloping; there were the brackish holdings; there were the holdings which were too small, etc., etc. All those matters have been brought to the notice of the hon. the Minister. Thousands of rand have been spent in trying to reclaim the waterlogged holdings, with a great degree of success. Some holdings were so bad that they simply had to lie fallow. At the present time some of those holdings are still lying fallow. But there is a tremendous demand for land in the country, and among others there is land hunger at Vaalharts. There is no doubt about it that it is in the blood of a farmer that when he sees a small piece of land lying idle, which he considers he could usefully employ, he simply cannot rest until that land is being used. So I must constantly convey to the hon. the Minister the representations of people who desire this piece of fall-out land or who want portion of a holding which is regarded as uneconomic. Then there are still waterlogged holdings to which attention ought to be given. Then there are also pieces of fall-out land at one time used very beneficially by the Minister when there were so many waterlogged holdings at Vaalharts. The Minister used this fall-out land to help people with land so that they could have an economic holding. I think the worst cases of waterlogging at Vaalharts to-day are a thing of the past. But the people are still insisting that the Minister should allot some of those fall-out lands to them permanently. They want to buy that land, and if the Minister is unwilling to sell, they are prepared to lease it. At the present time there still is land at Vaalharts which could be beneficially used by people whose lands adjoin those lands which are lying fallow. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister whether he cannot this afternoon announce a firm policy in connection with those lands, so that people may know whether it will avail them to apply for the sale of that land or the lease of a portion thereof to them. I shall greatly appreciate such a statement, and I can assure the hon. the Minister that if the farmers of Vaalharts can have certainty on that point, they will not fall over one another to apply for such a piece of land. They will appreciate it if a fixed policy could be laid down so that they may know what it is proposed to do there, and whether some of that land may be allotted or sold or leased to them. I know there was a time when the hon. the Minister caused certain lands to be surveyed. Small dairy farms have also been allotted by him since he has been Minister of Lands. He also caused certain farms to be surveyed, farms that were larger than those dairy farms, with a view to allotting those farms. The hon. the Minister will know that I am referring to lands in the direction of the western canal and along the great canal in the direction of Warrenton. Those lands have not been allotted as yet. They were surveyed years ago, but I do not know what became of those farms. Mr. Chairman, the land hunger there continues. Perhaps the hon. the Minister could give us some information in that respect too, so that the people in that area, as well as people from other places, may know what their prospects are of obtaining land. Of course I should like to see that applicants from that area itself should get this land, because they are familiar with farming conditions there. They are not people who still have to be tested to see whether they are capable of farming economically or not. They are familiar with conditions there, and if that land is allotted those people will be able to adapt themselves immediately to those circumstances, and in that way commence farming economically. Now I am wondering whether the hon. the Minister will furnish us with some information in that regard as well.

There is another thing I should like to bring to the attention of the Minister. I shall be in favour of delaying the allotment of that land until there is a proper water supply on each farm. If there is no proper water supply, any attempt at farming will be doomed to failure.

I should like to wish the hon. the Minister prosperity and health for the future. Once again I should like to thank him very cordially for the manner in which he has dealt with matters, particularly the affairs of Vaalharts.

I should like to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. member for Kimberley (North) (Mr. H. T. van G. Bekker) in making representations to the hon. the Minister to assist the settlers at Vaalharts still further. The hon. member referred to the progress made in reclaiming waterlogged holdings, and now the hon. member also asks that settlers be given the opportunity to either lease or purchase pieces of fall-out land. I said on a previous occasion that originally there were many uneconomic holdings at Vaalharts. Originally people received 40 morgen instead of 30 morgen because a large part of such a holding was regarded as uneconomic. I think we have now reached the stage where we should assist the settler to develop the whole 40 morgen instead of only the 30 morgen. Those ten morgen are lying there, exposed to the elements, it is absolutely valueless to the State; and it is absolutely useless to the settler. I think we ought to assist those people to develop that land so as to bring it to proper production, and not permit them only to lease or buy the fall-out land.

I appreciate the reply given by the hon. the Minister in respect of the problem of the alkalinity of land raised by me. I really cannot understand why the hon. member for Somerset East (Mr. Vosloo) was so sensitive. I am very glad to be able to say that the hon. the Minister did not adopt a similar petty attitude like that adopted by the hon. member for Somerset East. We on this side of the House cannot help it if people approach us to raise matters in this House because the hon. member for Somerset East has failed to put their case. We on this side did not say that absolutely nothing has been done. I said the officials were there, but the thing we are objecting to is the time lag. And not only in regard to this case of Armmansrivier and Sandrivier, but you have the same thing at other places where dams are being constructed. It usually takes a long time before the man on whose land the dam is to be built, or before the man who is going to be situated below the dam, knows what his actual position is going to be. The example in the constituency of the hon. member for Somerset East is a good illustration of what happens all too often.

There is another thing I should like to raise with the hon. the Minister; or rather, I should like to ask what progress has been made. I think the hon. the Minister is the chairman of the Cabinet Committee in respect of the Orange River scheme. We know the dams are being built, and we know the tunnels are in course of construction. But thus far nobody knows what progress has been made as regards the lay-out of the settlements. We believe that approximately 300,000 morgen of land will eventually receive water under that scheme; a tremendous number of phases of schemes will be applied. I think the House of Assembly and the people outside are entitled to know what progress has been made with the plans, where the settlements will be situated and what the policy of the Government is going to be in that connection.

Do you wish to speculate with land?

Mr. Chairman, I object most strongly to that ugly remark by the hon. member for Prieska. I think that was completely uncalled for. How can the hon. Member think that because I am asking a question, I do so because there are people who wish to speculate with land. The hon. member surely knows that when the scheme was announced, we were told what land would be affected. Did the hon. member not read that? We now wish to know what the general policy is to be; how large will the holdings be, etc. The House of Assembly is fully entitled to ask those questions. We are entitled to know where those settlements are going to be laid out. The hon. member for Prieska is not going to tell me that he knows so little about settlements that at the time when the dams for the Vaalharts settlement were being built he did not know that the settlement would be laid out there? Of course the hon. member knew that.

How large, do you say, should the holdings be?

The people are entitled to know what progress the hon. the Minister has made, as chairman of the Cabinet Committee, with the laying out of those schemes; how many farmers will be settled there and what is going to be the extent of the holdings.

How much water must they get?

The hon. member for Somerset East ought to know that that does not fall under the Vote of the hon. the Minister. I think the public is fully entitled to know this. And not only the public, but also the people who are concerned in this matter, the people whose land is being bought out. We also have lots of correspondence in connection with these matters. We have correspondence from people who say that surveys are being made on their farms; they do not know whether canals will be crossing their farms; they do not know whether their land is going to fall under the new scheme; they do not know what their future is.

You are now talking tripe.

The hon. member says I am talking tripe. Here I have a letter from a man who owns land in that area. He wants to know where that scheme is going to be situated because officials and other people are already busy with investigations. He is being told, for instance, that under the Department of Agriculture he will no longer be able to apply further soil conservation schemes. He now wants to know what his future is going to be. The people are entitled to know what the hon. the Minister of Lands proposes to do. If the hon. the Minister says that he is unable to furnish the required information to the House at this stage, we can understand that. But I think it ought to be within the power of the hon. the Minister to tell us what progress has been made and what is going to happen in the future, not only as regards the building of the dams, because he is not able to tell us that, as that does not fall under his Department, but as regards where the scheme is going to be situated.

I think it is our duty on this side of the House to make these representations on behalf of all the people who will be intimately affected by the Orange River scheme. They do not know where they are, in the same way that the people whose land is being bought up do not know where they are. I foresee that in the next few years the Sword of Damocles will be hanging over the heads of those people, and they will not know exactly what their future position will be. In order to satisfy those people, I think the hon. the Minister ought to tell those people from time to time what their position is going to be and where those schemes will be laid out.

One cannot really blame the United Party. They have so very few people who know anything about agriculture. For instance, one would swear the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) (Mr. Streicher) alone represents the whole of South Africa. I just want to say this to the hon. member: If he had just made a study of the Orange River scheme he would have known something about this whole matter. Judging from what he said, he knows absolutely nothing about the planning of that scheme. It seems to me he does not even know about the dams and the tunnel which are going to be built. One tunnel will be 51 miles long. It will take six or seven years to complete that tunnel. Before a start can be made with the construction of that tunnel, the necessary camps will have to be established at various places. As soon as the water flows through the tunnel, there will be 22,000 morgen of land ready for irrigation. The Department feels that the first available supply of water should be used on the holdings already laid out. So the first aim is to supply the land that is already available with water. Then further expansion will follow. There will be terrific expansion in the Eastern Province. I do not think my hon. friend even knows how much land there is available for expansion. I do not think he knows how much land in the Steynsburg and Hofmeyr districts will fall under the new scheme. In the second phase of the scheme 15,000 morgen will be added. I suppose the hon. member knows that the wall of the dam will be raised 60 feet after the second phase, and the dam will then be so much larger. Surely he knows about all the power stations that will be erected.

How many?

Ten. He does not even know that; every child knows it. We in the Eastern Province really do not need the services of That hon. friend. We who are concerned with this matter know what is going on. The people in those parts are highly satisfied. The people of the Great Fish River Board who were here the other day, are so satisfied with everything, that is going to happen that I do not think we require the advice of people who are not concerned with the matter at all.

I should like to thank the hon. the Minister most cordially for all the good work he has done in the Fish River valley. There have been periods when we have had a most difficult time without water. We are a little more fortunate to-day because we now have water. By buying up the land of some of those people, they were given an opportunity to buy other land. The prices were right, and the Government was sympathetic. So we say thank you very much to the hon. the Minister for what he has done. But the Orange River scheme is a very great undertaking; it is much greater than the Tennessee Valley.

I want to say to the hon. member that we do not need his opinion at all; we can look after ourselves and the people in that area are satisfied. We say thank you very much for the good work which is already being done in connection with the erection of the camps, etc. They will start on the tunnel in February 1965. I say to that hon. member therefore that he should just keep his hands off something that he knows nothing about; let me rather talk about something that he does know something about and leave us alone.

I should like to thank the Minister also for the good work he has done in the Eastern Province. I also wish to thank him for the fine Zebra Park he has given us. As everybody knows, it used to be a small park 2,000 morgen, but the Minister and the Parks Board have given us something of which we are very proud. Cradock once again is very satisfied. They do not need the assistance of other people; they are able to look after their own interests. The public of Cradock say thank you very much for that splendid park. It is going to be one of the finest in the country. Two or three more farms still have to be acquired. I understand there was not sufficient money available to acquire them before. There were only 25 zebras in that park but we have now been given a further 35, and those very rare animals will now be able to increase. Now that the Minister is to retire, we just want to tell him that we shall never forget what he has done for us. As far as we in the Eastern Province are concerned, his work is not open to criticism. We say to him: “Thank you very much.”

Sir, it is not my intention to strike a discordant note because this is an occasion on which the hon. the Minister is receiving felicitations on a long and honourable record in this House. I must, however, say that his lecture was quite unnecessary. I am adult enough to know, when a man has the experience the hon. the Minister has on that he is probably entitled to say what he did say to me this afternoon. And I accept it, but I just want to tell the Minister that he missed the point. I drew two other parallels, not in any spirit of criticizing anybody; not in any spirit of intruding upon the work of any other member of this House but to demonstrate to the hon. the Minister that as far as the Coloured people were concerned in the Upington area, those Coloured persons who were farming along the Orange River, were in a very serious position. There are plots which are much too small for farming purposes. I do not think for one moment that that position can be rectified in five minutes. I also mentioned that a committee of inquiry had been appointed by the Minister of Coloured Affairs. The Minister might say, as he did a little earlier on, that this was the right Vote but that I had said nothing about the Vote itself. We are reaching the stage where Coloured Affairs is cutting right across every Department and we do not know where each one comes into the picture. I therefore want to take this opportunity this afternoon of ventilating the case I wish to state. The Minister did not get my point. I admit that. I know that minor sub-divisions of a given size have been terminated. But with the development of the Orange River scheme, I am hoping, that we are going to have a big piece of ground for the Coloured community to farm upon. I want to draw attention to the fact that the plots they have along the Orange River are too small to farm upon. In making my case and in drawing a parallel I quoted the case of the Douglas Erwe which is occupied by Whites. I acknowledged that the hon. the Minister of Agriculture as well as the hon. member for Kimberley (South) (Dr. W. L. D. M. Venter) had done something about it. I did not add that a furrow had been built but the fact remains that the erven are still the same size and that the people are still struggling to make a living. The Minister went to great pains to play upon words about eking out an existence on the Vaalharts. The hon. member for Kimberley (North) (Mr. H. T. van G. Bekker) has just said that he has on many occasions complained to the Minister and brought many things to his notice. I do not wish to labour that point. But I want the hon. the Minister to remember this: That scheme has been in existence since 1937, possibly a bit earlier. I trade in that area, as the hon. the Minister well knows. It took nearly 20 years to get that scheme on its feet and many of those settlers have left. The size of plots is 29.6 morgen. They experienced all sorts of difficulties such as pests and crop failures, “vrot pootjie” and so forth. I shall say this: They do a first-class job at the experimental farm. I am not criticizing what is being done. I am suggesting that in any future planning where Coloured people are concern!—those are the people I speak for—the plots must not be so small that they cannot make a living on them. The conditions under which those people live are shameful. It is nobody’s particular fault at the moment; it cannot be rectified in five minutes but I merely ventilate this case. I ask the Minister to accept what I say in the spirit in which I say it.

I really wanted to associate myself with the speech of the hon. member for Nelspruit (Mr. Faurie), a speech in which he said a number of kind things about the Minister and praised him, but in view of the Minister’s remarks to him, I shall rather not do so. I just want to warn the hon. the Minister in advance that I am going to ask him for something. I am not going to praise him, I merely wish to say to him, from the very bottom of my heart, “Thank you very very much for the long years of service that you have devoted to your nation”. We want to tell the Minister that he can always rest assured that the people of South Africa, irrespective of what side of the House represents them, will remember him as a Minister who according to his lights and his convictions exerted his energies and devoted his life to the service of his nation. We thank him for that most sincerely and most cordially.

As a member who is concerned with the Orange River scheme, I should like to convey to the hon. the Minister my thanks also for the manner in which his Department is doing its best to expedite the valuations as much as possible. We appreciate there are problems to be overcome which cause delays in some respects. Nevertheless we wish to say to the Minister: Thank you very much for the fact that you and your staff are doing everything in your power to have those valuations disposed of as soon as possible. Frequently there is much at stake for the people to have the valuations completed as soon as possible, because they have to make further provision for the future. For that reason we appreciate what the hon. the Minister and his Department are doing so much more. I do not wish to take up too much of the time of the House. I merely wish to refer the hon. the Minister briefly to one small matter. It so happens that there are a few small pieces of land along the Orange River on which lucerne has been established. That land has to be bought out now. It is quite in order where whole farms are bought out. But there are a few farms having pieces of land with established lucerne on it, and it so happens that it is that very land which has to be bought out now. This is my question: Is it not possible to fix the price basis of that land with the established lucerne on it, at such a level that it will be possible for the farmer to utilize the interest on the money he receives per morgen, to purchase dry fodder in future in the place of the lucerne that is lost as a result of the land being bought out? I do not know what practical problems are involved, but I should like to know whether the Minister does not think it possible to do something of this nature?

In a previous debate we mentioned the colossal task the hon. the Minister has to perform. I wish to associate myself with what the hon. member for Smithfield (Mr. J. J. Fouché jnr.) has just said, and say thank you to the Minister for the work he has done.

I have risen merely to draw the Minister’s attention to two matters. The first relates to the Makatini Flats development. We know a dam is being built now, largely as a result of the two visits paid by the hon. the Minister to those parts. We know also that the Department of Agricultural Technical Services is busy making surveys of the land there but that the Government has not yet taken final decisions on two aspects. The one aspect is what portion will be White settlement and what portion will be Bantu settlement. I do not expect the Minister to reply to me on this now, because I know a commission of inquiry is investigating this matter. However, I should like to raise this matter in this connection, namely: An acute shortage of sugar is developing throughout the world as a result of the fact that beetroot sugar is gradually disappearing from Europe. It is disappearing because land is too expensive to continue producing beetroot sugar, but also because the cost of production of beetroot sugar is much greater than that of cane sugar. Consequently the production of beetroot sugar is gradually declining in Europe, mainly because those lands are largely being used to produce grain which is sold behind the Iron Curtain. Furthermore, because tourism in the poorer countries of Europe, such as Spain, has experienced a revival, particularly among American tourists, there is a greater consumption of sugar. South Africa therefore is in the position today that if it could produce an extra 100,000 tons of sugar, the European market, through France, lies open to receive that sugar. In this connection I should like to ask the hon. the Minister to see to it that the necessary inquiries be instituted to establish whether that portion of the Makatini Flats which is to be made available for White settlement, cannot in future be used for the sugar production project. I merely ask that an investigation be made in this connection.

The second request I wish to make of the hon. the Minister is this: As a result of the industrial development at Newcastle there is an immediate market for vegetable produce. I know further that having regard to the supply of water there—dams they are keen to surrender to the Government to be used in this connection—there is sufficient irrigable land which could be used for the production of vegetables for the daily market right at the front door. I should like to ask that an investigation be made in this regard too.

I should like to conclude by saying this: The Department of Lands has undergone a change through the years. The Department of Lands originally started off with settlement schemes as rehabilitation schemes, and in order to provide a livelihood for those people uprooted from the rural areas. The Department of Lands was regarded initially as the Department that had to find ways and means of solving the poor White problem and to find a home for the displaced ruralite. It was mainly under the policy of this Minister that his Department gradually reached the stage that under all three the Sections 20, 23 and 31, it has now become the main task of the Department of Lands to establish the requisite economic unit for the man who is able to produce or for the man who is capable of being trained to produce well, to enable that man to become a beneficial citizen of the country, a citizen who will ultimately be an independent producer, standing on his own legs.

In recent years the hon. the Minister has introduced certain amendments of the law to develop this matter. As recently as a year ago he came forward with an amendment. Whereas formerly we sat with a man who possessed an uneconomic unit, and first had to come forward with a certificate that it is an uneconomic unit in fact before he could expand, that snag has been removed and the Minister now has the discretionary power to do so. The hon. the Minister has facilitated matters further in as much as a man who owns a small piece of land, which is too small, may surrender it to the Government, and it then can be taken as part of his greater consolidated unit as one-tenth payment. In this respect I think we should have it on record that it was mainly under this Minister, with his great love for the land of South Africa, but also with his practical knowledge of agricultural conditions, as well as his aim to try to prevent overcropping, that the soil has been developed in such a way that it will be conserved for posterity by ploughing back fertility and so establishing an economic unit. This Minister has succeeded in making lands in that respect, one of the most important and greatest factors in the sphere of agriculture in South Africa, and I think when he is no longer here as Minister of Lands, agriculture in South Africa and every farmer who can acquire a small pice of land will always remember that this Minister, with his policy, saw to it that the soil was cared for properly and was divided in such a way that it could be looked after properly and economically. You have earned the thanks of South Africa for that.

I should like to associate myself with those hon. members who have paid tribute to the Minister of Lands. We have been collaborating for years, and it has always been very pleasant to collaborate with the Minister, and I should like to endorse all the kind words addressed to him this afternoon. He has in his time Derformed a great task, first as Member of Parliament and subsequently as Minister, and here in the Cape, where there are settlements on a fairly large scale at the present time, he particularly meant very much to us. I cannot help telling this little joke when I refer to the Minister. Once upon a time there was a funeral, and they buried an old Coloured boy; there were also many eulogies at the funeral, and then the old widow afterwards said to the children: “Let us go; it is not your dad they are burying here.”

I have really risen to deal with a few matters in connection with the Orange River scheme. There is something that bothers me. I have had no objections, and hardly any complaints as regards the valuation of improvements in connection with the Orange River, but I am having many difficulties in connection with the valuation of grazing land and the valuation of the irrigation parts. As a practical farmer I know that all land is not equally good. A man has a small piece of land with lucerne on it, the depth of the soil being three feet, while another man who has lucerne there, may have soil with a depth of 30 feet. The lucerne that grows deeper is worth much more. But I cannot go along and value the people’s land, and I do not know whether there is a proper survey of the various lands. Now the complaint reaches me that one man receives so much for his land, and another receives so much less, and why is that so? I find it difficult to reply to that. I am not an appraiser, and one always finds oneself in the position of the man in the middle, and sometimes it is very difficult. Then we come to grazing land. Once again I have to say that the capacity of land varies. You find farms, although I do not believe in those parts where the Van der Kloof Dam and the Verwoerd Dam are to be built, where you require three morgen for one sheep. As regards the schemes referred to, the general average determined by the Soil Conservation Committee there is two morgen for one sheep. But now you have a number of farms which incidentally or fortunately have a greater capacity, and you have farms capable of carrying one sheep per morgen plus a certain number of horses and cattle. Now I should like to ask the hon. the Minister to draw the attention of his appraisers to the fact that when the Soil Conservation Committee tells his appraiser something of this nature, they ought to accent that and then they could perhaps also call for the opinion of practical farmers in the vicinity, to ascertain that it is not just a trick to get a little more money. I take Bergplaas, for instance, the farm where the Van der Kloof Dam is to be built. People outside have told me that this is the best farm in Petrusville; it carries one sheep per morgen throughout the year. The valuation of that farm is R34 per morgen. If Mr. van der Walt now has to go and buy other land, because he has to leave that farm, he will have to purchase a farm where two morgen will be required for one sheep, and he will never get it at a price of R34 per morgen. He will have to pay R68 per morgen to keep one sheep. That is where the farmers feel there is some lack of practical knowledge and experience somewhere. I feel greater use should be made of local knowledge. Take Seekoegat where the tunnel is to be built at Mr. van Wyk’s farm. I can hardly believe that the valuation there is R48 per morgen. I have made a few notes, and I do not wish to come along with complaints here, because Mr. Spies and I know each other well, and I do not know which one of us is more pleased to see the other when we meet, but we have a few practical problems which I should like to bring to the Minister’s attention. He might be able to do something about the matter before he retires. There is the farm Beskuitfontein, just this side of Venterstad, which is now going to be wholly inundated. It is a fairly large farm which has been sub-divided subsequently —the Minister does not like sub-division, and I like it still less—among the various members of the family and at the present time there are three farmers on the farm. Every portion has been given a different name, but the one portion has been valued at R51, another portion at R41 and another at R24. Now I have tried to find out what is wrong, and why this should be so. Now the practical man farming there tells me this: Man, you can believe me the portion valued at R24 is the best of the three farms. That is the farm which has already been planned, where walls have been constructed and dams have been built. The other places may have nicer dwellings on them, but the farm producing the income is that one of R24 per morgen. Now I once again ask the hon. the Minister to devote attention to this matter. The hon. the Minister told me, when I was overjoyed about the announcement of the Orange River scheme, that in two years’ time I would no longer have the smile on my face. Truly he was right that I would no longer have the smile on my face, for in the meantime a considerable number of problems have arisen, and I should like him to assist me to solve some of the problems and the Secretary for Agriculture should also help me, so that we may have uniformity as regards grazing, and so that we may have regard to carrying capacity. That information you should get from your Soil Conservation Committees. They are the people who are able to tell a farmer what load he can place on his land. It is not the valuator who comes from Pretoria or what have you who knows the conditions. He does not know the farms and has no knowledge of them. But your local committee knows what a farm’s capacity is. I ask the hon. the Minister to help us a little in this matter. I am convinced he will be very willing to do so.

I just want to express my gratitude and appreciation to the Minister and his staff for having made Government farms available to farmers who, as a result of the drought in the north-western Transvaal, turned to the Department of Lands with the request that those farms he made available to them for grazing purposes. In doing that the Department assisted greatly in relieving the position to those stock farmers. In that way many animals were saved, particularly breeding stock which would otherwise have had to be sold. I think of farms in my own constituency, such as Ratsegaai, a large farm which has been acquired from Bantu, as well as the farm Skilpadnes on which the cattle of farmers whose farms have been hit by the drought are still grazing to-day. In this connection I want to make an appeal to the Minister and his Department, namely, in view of the continuing drought conditions there, not to dispose or hand out that type of farm in the north-western Transvaal while the drought prevails. I know that some of those Government farms are in the process of being made available in terms of Section 20 or 23 or being sold by public auction and will consequently no longer be available to farmers in those regions while the drought lasts. My request is that such farms should not be sold or allocated while the drought lasts. Just as the hon. member has been accommodating in the past in this respect I trust he will accede to this request because there is still a drought.

There is another matter I wish to bring to the notice of the hon. the Minister. I gathered from his reply to the hon. member for King William’s Town (Mr. Warren) and the hon. member for Heilbron (Mr. Froneman)—unfortunately I was not in the House—that they had asked that farmers who offered their farms as compensatory land to Bantu Administration in the process of eliminating Black spots should be given preference and the hon. the Minister gave a positive reply and indicated that such applications were indeed taken into consideration by the Department and that in so far as the law permitted it, preference was given. However, I want to go a little further and ask whether the time has not arrived for us to think about amending the law in such a way that Bantu Administration itself can handle these transactions. It must exclusively be transactions in connection with the elimination of Black spots and the offering of that land to farmers who want to make their land, which is situated in existing homelands, available. In terms of the strict letter of the law this cannot be done and many opportunities are lost because we must remember that many farmers whose farms border on Bantu homelands are not anxious to dispose of those farms. But if they can get land of the same agricultural value they are sometimes willing to enter into an exchange transaction with the Department of Bantu Administration. Then they say: “If we can get one of those Black spot farms in the Highveld—it may be a farm in the Lichtenburg or Koster district—where we can follow the same farming methods we are agreeable to exchange or to buy, otherwise we refuse to offer our farms.” In that way exchange transactions between Bantu Administration and farmers in respect of reserve land have already been concluded very successfully and satisfactorily. If Bantu Administration itself can handle such transactions it would facilitate matters very much. In the north-western Transvaal, particularly in the Highveld regions, there are many of these Bantu farms or Black spots that have to be eliminated. In the small district of Koster alone there are 25,000 morgen. Those Bantu cannot be removed to the Bushveld. They are not adapted to that area nor is their stock. They have to be moved to other areas in the Highveld. They must therefore be moved from Koster, Ventersdorp and elsewhere to areas bordering on Bantu homelands, areas which are also situated in the Highveld. The ethnic connection must, of course, be taken into account. This aspect is very important as well. We must also take into consideration the fact that this process of offering White farms as compensatory land in order to eliminate Black spots will continue for very many years. In order to comply with the law and in order to fulfil the promises made during the Hertzog-Smuts regime we must still make a few million morgen of land available to the Bantu. If this exchange of Government land can be controlled by the Department of Bantu Administration, I think the process will take place more smoothly, in other words, it will be completed sooner and in that way better progress can be made in the carrying out of our policy.

I make an appeal to the hon. the Minister of Lands to negotiate with the Minister of Bantu Administration with the object of making arrangements whereby the machinery of this process can be oiled so that the process can be completed sooner.

On behalf of the north-western Transvaal I want to tell the Minister that we learnt with great appreciation of the steps he had taken to provide so many land-hungry farmers with land. He will particularly be remembered as the Minister who gave the new policy an impetus, the policy whereby the applicant as well as the property gets screened when it comes to the allocation of State land. He was the person who fostered the idea that only economic units should be made available. He is also the person who appointed this select committee which will, we hope, submit a report which will greatly assist in realizing this ideal of the hon. the Minister, namely, that only economic units should be made available to our land-hungry farmers.

Mr. Chairman, there have been so many expressions of gratitude that I am beginning to feel like the most important man at a funeral. In any case I wish to thank hon. members most heartily for what they have said. This is not the occasion to tell you what my philosophy in life is, Sir. But you will probably find the reasons in that why hon. members thank me for certain things but not for others. In any case I can say this that during all the years I have been here as head of various Departments, I have always received the greatest measure of friendliness from this House, even on occasions when we differed seriously and fundamentally from one another. I for my part have always tried to reply to hon. members in the same spirit. But one remains a human being and very often somebody makes you so the … in that you want to tell him the plain truth! For example … no wait, let us rather cut out the examples!

I shall now try to reply to every member’s questions. The hon. member for Marico wants the Department of Bantu Administration itself to be able to sell land to farmers. The hon. member must not stir up a hornets’ nest! Let the Department of Bantu Administration buy land for its Bantu but the moment it starts selling land to Whites you will have the complaint: The Department of Bantu Administration knows nothing about that side of the business whereas my Department knows everything about it. Let us therefore rather sell that land to the Whites. Otherwise you will have chaos. Naturally I do not blame the Department of Bantu Administration for this, because that is not their work in the long run.

The hon. member for De Aar-Colesberg and a number of other members raised the question of valuations. The hon. member for Smithfield also spoke about prices. We want to buy many farms there and the hon. member asked us to be quick about it. As a matter of fact everybody wants us to be quick. But in that case they must not ask for a survey in respect of every piece of land, because if we have to do that it would take years. As far as we are concerned we have to choose the lesser of two evils and that being the case you will have cases where, whereas the one person thinks he has received enough for his farm, his neighbour will not think so. That cannot be avoided. In those cases where people think they have been paid too little for their land either they or us can appoint a valuator. Let me give the hon. member for De Aar-Colesberg one example, without mentioning the name, where the person complained bitterly about the valuation determined by the valuator of the Land Board. The person concerned then wanted to call in the services of a private valuator. He did so and then he said the valuator had done a very good job in valuating his farm. For example, he walked around much more on the farm than the members of the Land Board. What we could not tell him, however, was that that private valuator had valued his farm at far less than the Land Board had! That is the sort of thing you will always find. When you bear in mind that 60, 80 or 100 adjoining farms sometimes are bought you realize that you cannot satisfy every owner. There will always be the one who will be dissatisfied and who will say that the other person received too much and he too little. That is only human after all. We are only trying to do our best. The members of the Land Board as well as the valuators whose services we use have a great deal of experience of this. As I say we are doing our best and we also try to finalize transactions as quickly as possible. Naturally it is not necessary for me to say why we try to do so as quickly as possible. But we do our best and I think we are doing it very successfully.

The hon. member for Wakkerstroom asked us to regard the Makatini-flats in the light of the present sugar shortage. As he probably knows the dam which will provide the Makatini-flats with water was built, in the first instance, with a view to a sugar-growing scheme. I think there were 50,000 morgen which could be placed under sugar. I speak subject to correction because I am now talking about a few years ago. I think there were also 70,000 morgen on which mixed farming could be conducted. Well, shortly after we had started with the construction of the dam the sugar market collapsed and it was even necessary to lay down quotas to the sugar producers. That gave us a fright and we immediately started to investigate the question of whether the Makatini-flats could be used for another purpose. In the meantime, however, the sugar market has recovered and the general opinion is that it will remain as it is for the next three years. Time will tell what will happen afterwards. We are in any case experiencing a very favourable period as far as sugar is concerned. We can produce everything and even if we could produce an additional 100,000 ton we would be able to absorb it. We have the markets. But we are not sure whether that will still be the position in three or four years’ time. In any case, the sugar market is much better today than it was. I think the Makatini-flats are only suitable for the production of sugar although one could perhaps produce other products there as well. It is, however, pre-eminently a sugar-producing area and I think it will still become the greatest sugar-producing area in the Republic.

The hon. member for Port Elizabeth (West) wanted to know what progress was being made with the Orange River scheme. He very airily asked how much land would be placed under irrigation, which farms would be bought etc. But what does he think this scheme is? Does he think it is just an ordinary little scheme? Surely it is one of the biggest schemes in the world. One of the things we have to do, in order to make a success of it, is to plan it properly beforehand. Approximately 100,000 morgen of land have to be surveyed but surely it is impossible to do that within a few weeks or months or even a few years. Surely that is a gigantic task. Everything must still be surveyed because we have to know what land will come under water, etc. These are not things that can be done immediately. On the contrary, it demands time. In case the hon. member does not know it I want to tell him that I issued a statement after the first meeting of the Cabinet Committee on the Orange River scheme. I issued a Press statement in regard to the progress made. I said in that statement that we would from time to time issue statements to indicate what progress had been made in the meantime. Our object is to take the public along with us in this matter. That is why. we always want to keep them au fait with matters in this connection. But for the fact that I had to be here to-day I would have attended a further meeting of that committee. I emphasize that it is our intention to keep the public informed of developments and what the plans are for the immediate future.

The hon. member for Karoo said I missed the point of his first speech. It seems to me that in his first speech he was barking under the right tree, only he was not barking so well! In his second speech, again, he was barking well, only now he was under the wrong tree! Because the point he said he wanted to raise was in regard to the size of farms on Coloured settlements, and that is not a matter falling under me but under the Minister of Coloured Affairs.

Touché!

Then we can leave the matter there. The corpse can be carried out appropriately!

*The hon. member for Kimberley (North) referred to those small pieces of land on the Vaalharts settlement which have not yet been allotted, and asked whether these small pieces of land cannot be allotted. It is always happening that hon. members who have settlements within their constituencies, come along with requests from the settlers who see these small pieces of land, the little vineyards of Nabob, that they should be allotted to them. They say the land lies unused there, and can be put to beneficial use. But if we do that, we shall do much more harm than good, because once you have laid out your settlement, then only your problems arise. It might occur that land becomes moist in consequence of the subterranean formation of the rock bottom. Now a wet spot appears on a settler’s land at a place where he never expected it. If the water cannot be drained off, he must be compensated. Brackish spots may also appear, and all kinds of other difficulties arise. In such cases it is essential that there should be those little pieces of land with which the settlers concerned may be compensated. Had those small pieces of land not been available, we would have been saddled with more difficulties at the present time. To be quite candid, I think that in view of the experience we have gained here, that when in future we lay out new settlements, we shall have to set aside little pieces of land deliberately in case they may be required later on. To lay out a settlement does not mean merely to survey land and to provide it with water. Much more is involved, and if you do not take sufficient precautions against unforeseen occurrences, you may be faced with many difficulties later on. For instance, you have to reserve lands in case they may be required later on. Therefore as long as there is still a danger that the need mary arise for compensatory land to be given to farmers at Vaalharts, we cannot allot those that are there now.

He referred to the piece of land on the western side of the canal, and said we ought to cut it up and give it to the settlers. I know about that land, but he also said something that is quite correct, namely that we should not allot it unless provision has been made for a water supply. We have referred the matter to the Department of Water Affairs with the request that they investigate whether they can divert water from the canal running through that land to give to those people, and we are still busy with that.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote No. 6.—“Deeds Offices”, R840,000,

In discussing the last Vote, several complimentary remarks were made in regard to the Minister by hon. members opposite. In fact, listening to Government members one realized that this was the only Nationalist Minister who had done anything for the country. Especially in Cradock he increased the zebra population from 37 to 60! But I want to talk about the Deeds Office, and unfortunately I cannot pay him any compliments in regard to what he has done for the Deeds Office, but I hope that before he retires at the end of the Session he will do something, and that the attorneys will then be able to thank him for what he has done to remedy matters in the Deeds Office.

Last year the hon. member for Ceres (Mr. S. L. Muller) stated the case very ably and appealed for something to be done, and he drew a graph for the Minister showing how the officials in the Deeds Office suffered as compared with officials in the Minister’s Office, and the Minister thanked him for the graph and said he would study it, and he said that the position did not seem quite right and he would ask the Public Service Commission to investigate and to report, and he promised the House that he would act on the report. The Deeds Office is one of the many institutions of which we are very proud indeed in South Africa. Our system of legislation is a matter of envy for the rest of the world, but I must say that the procedure in the Deeds Office is not as efficient as it has been in the past. In terms of the regulations, a deed should be registered six days after it has been lodged. But the position to-day is that it takes from three to four weeks for a deed to be executed after lodging. In terms of the regulations, and as the Deeds Office used to operate, anybody transferring property or lodging a deed knew exactly when the deed would be registered and when the money would be paid over. The Minister must realize that this is most important in business transactions, to know exactly when you will get your money. But as the position is to-day, nobody knows exactly when the deed will be registered and therefore attorneys can never give any assurance to their clients as to when they will receive their money. It is not only small amounts which are involved. With the prices of property as high as they are to-day, it is a matter of considerable importance for clients to know exactly when they will get their money. There is also the question of losing interest, and I submit that this matter of rectifying matters cannot be delayed any longer. The law societies, and especially the Side Bar, made representations and put up a memorandum last year and pointed out that it was not the fault of the officials. You cannot merely transfer any other Government official to the Deeds Office, because the officials in the Deeds Office have to be properly trained. They hold a most responsible position. They have to check all the deeds to see that the public is properly protected. We know that officials retire from the Deeds Office in the normal course, and also that they leave the Deeds Office for better pay elsewhere. The Minister may say that attorneys are to blame because they employ them and pay them more, but you cannot stop a man from resigning because he can improve his position, and therefore the only way in which the Minister can improve conditions in the Deeds Office is by improving the conditions of the men working there. If they have to be paid more than other Government officials, then that has to be done. You cannot merely say that you cannot treat the officials of one Department differently from those of another and therefore the officials in the Deeds Office cannot be better paid. The fact remains that if you cannot get the staff to do the work in that office you will have to make an exception of that office and pay them better or improve their conditions of service. We know that the number of deeds lodged has increased over the years. In a memorandum submitted by the Side Bar last year I find that for the first seven months there was an increase of 4,500 deeds, or over 600 deeds a month, and only in the Cape. I do not know what the position is in the other provinces. It means that every month there is an increase of 600 deeds, and my information is that this increase has continued this year. Therefore there is so much more work put on to the shoulders of the officials of the Deeds Office. I know also that the hours of work have been changed in the Deeds Office. I do not know whether that meets with the approval of the officials themselves. The hours were changed to 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. I know that is not very convenient for the practitioners because deeds have to be finally stamped and prepared for registration before 3 p.m. instead of 3.30. Naturally conveyancers have complained of suffering inconvenience because their hours were cut down. I ask the Minister to take up that question also with the Deeds Office to see whether we cannot return to the old hours of 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., although the rest of the Service has adopted the new hours.

I want the Minister to tell us what he has done since last year, because last year he promised the hon. member for Ceres that he would do something, and the position has not improved but has got worse. Then I want to ask the Minister also what he has done about accepting the new tariff of fees. We know that the Rules Board has accepted the tariff, but there seems to be a hold-up in the Minister’s Department. This matter of the tariff fees has been under investigation for some years now and we expected the tariffs to be published last year, but we still do not have them. I want the Minister to tell the Committee why there is this inordinate delay in publishing the new tariffs.

I should also like to stick up for the Deeds Registry. As far as I am concerned, the Deeds Registry is an office with a staff for whom I have more respect on account of their hard and faithful work than for any other office of the State. I can bear testimony from my own personal experience, that people in the Deeds Registry really do work very hard, from early in the morning until late in the evening, because the regulations provide that deeds must be registered within six days. For that reason the Deeds Registry has always worked against time. My experience of this office is that anybody interested in that office, may at any time go to any of the examiners, and you will always be received with the greatest measure of friendliness and helpfulness. But I am aware too that it is not so easy to administer that office. The flow through the Deeds Registry is affected by the times. Since the war we have had times when a tremendous number of deeds were registered. It depends on economic circumstances. The more transactions involving land there are, the greater the volume of work in the registry. One finds that during a certain period there is a tremendous amount of work, and the Deeds Registry falls into arrear, and then there is a lull. For the last few years there has been a reasonable lull, but latterly, as result of our thriving economy, many transactions have once again passed through the Deeds Registry. The officials employed in that office cannot be taken from any other Department at will. They have to be specially trained over many years. They are doing a very complicated kind of work. It is not only a question of knowledge of the Deeds Registries Act itself, but also a question of the experience they require. As a result of that I realize that it is difficult always to keep the staff up to strength so that they may be up to date. In recent times we have found that the registry has fallen greatly in arrears. That is due to various circumstances, such as the economic circumstances I have just referred to, but there are other factors too. People are trained in the Deeds Registry and when they know everything they are appointed by firms of attorneys at salaries greatly in excess of those they earned in the registry, and ultimately they themselves become attorneys. But that is not the only factor. I also know of instances where examiners have gone to other Departments in the Public Service. It is a fact that these people advance much more rapidly than they would have done in the Deeds Registry, because the Deeds Registry offers only a limited scope for promotion. We appreciate the difficulties and that is why I asked the Minister last year whether something could not be done about the matter. I compared their salaries with the salaries in the Master’s Office, because the Master’s Office performs more or less the same kind of work for the public; they examine estates in the same way that deeds are examined in the Deeds Registry. I felt that in view of the smaller staff of the Master’s Office, there were better prospects for advancement than in the Deeds Registry. I asked the Minister to go into the matter of whether opportunities could be created in the Deeds Registry so that more of the staff could reach the higher positions.

I am now speaking from second-hand knowledge, but I have heard that since then there has been such an inquiry. I do not wish to say what I have heard, but I should like to emphasize that the work in the Deeds Registry is specialized work. I should like to mention briefly what is done there. When a deed is lodged, it first of all goes to a junior examiner and he then goes through it meticulously and makes a note of anything he finds wrong. Then it goes to a senior examiner, and he examines it further and perhaps he may raise further queries, and then it goes to the Registrar of Deeds and on the sixth day it is registered. I have been told that they have been told: But you must not do this work for the attorneys; if you find a mistake in the deed, you must return it to the attorneys so that they can rectify it. But things do not work out that way. In practice it just does not work that way. Deeds are extremely complicated, and if the deed has to be returned to the attorney because of the first small mistake that is found, it will mean that it may have to be returned six times or even ten times, and that will not only result in very much more delay, but it will also give the Deeds Registry more work. If my information is correct, I say that approach is completely wrong. The procedure followed in the past has always been that the deed is fully examined and it is not thrown back after the first little mistake is found. If there are enough mistakes to justify it being thrown out, it goes back once with all the queries that have been raised; these are fixed up and then it is returned and it is registered. I feel something has to be done. It is a very difficult matter, but I think something has to be done to create opportunities in the Deeds Registry so that there will be a greater incentive for people to receive that training and to qualify themselves for the highest positions in that Department.

I should also like to refer to what the last speaker said on tariffs. We know that these tariffs have been under consideration for the last two years. We also know that as the tariffs are at the moment, they have always been very unfavourable, particularly for the attorney from the rural areas. I do not wish to go into details, but I should like to thank the Minister in anticipation, and ask him to put the tariffs right before he retires.

I do not for one moment wish to deny that there are many difficulties in connection with the Deeds Registry, and I think the two hon. members who have spoken, both of them attorneys who have experience of the matter, have appreciated what the difficulties are in a very reasonable manner. The question is how these difficulties can be overcome. One of the difficulties, as the hon. member for Ceres has said, is the varying number of deeds that are lodged. Last year we thought we had made up the leeway, and suddenly a whole lot of extra deeds came along this year, and because it is specialized work, you cannot take people from other Departments to assist with the work, for they cannot do it. That makes things difficult. There is the fact too that it is a small office and a closed office, and for that reason the prospects for promotion are limited and fewer people want to work there. The hon. member for Transkeian Territories asked whether these people should not be paid special salaries. He referred to the graph given to me by the hon. member for Ceres last year. I responded to the request of last year. I asked the Public Service Commission to send an inspector and to evaluate the work done by those people. He did so and submitted a report to us. We have now referred that report to the Public Service Commission, with our approval attached, and we asked them what they can do. I expect them to decide one of these days. So we did not sit still. I have here a list indicating how far in arrears they are. We admit they are in trouble. I have had to reply to this question every year since I became Minister of Lands, and when I look at his the position seems to be a little better than it was in the past. But even if it is better, it is in consequence of the enormous amount of overtime work those people put in. There is one office where they do not work overtime. It is interesting to note that three of our offices, Kimberley, King William’s Town and Bloemfontein, are up to date at present. Pretoria and Vryburg are almost up to date. Pietermaritzburg is three days in arrear, but most of the work now is in the Cape and the office here is 12 days in arrear. But I may just say that this report has been referred to all the registrars of deeds and I have asked for their opinions on the matter, and they have sent it back and as a result of that it has now gone to the Public Service Commission and we have asked them whether they cannot do something about it. So we have done all these things.

The question of the new hours is something we are now discussing with the registrars. It appears there is a good deal of dissatisfaction. The two hon. members also referred to the fees. At the present moment it is on my table.

How long has it been lying there already?

Since yesterday. I received it yesterday and I shall give my decision on it as soon as possible, before the end of this week.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote 7,—“Surveys”, R2,215,000.

I should like to raise a matter under “F”, cadastral and other surveys. I suppose we all realize the importance of good maps, particularly for a developing country. We are not too well off in this country in regard to maps, and what is more, most of our maps are on a very small scale, the scale of one in 250,000. What we require badly are maps of a larger scale, one in 50,000 showing far more detail. They are absolutely essential. We also require maps very badly for defence purposes. We all know that armies require good, large-scale maps, and aircraft also have to fly on large-scale maps. The Minister has increased the Vote considerably from last year, from R250,000 to R500,000. I think he is beginning to realize the necessity for good maps in our country. There are large areas of our country, especially our borders, where we may have to defend the country, which are at present completely unmapped. At the rate of spending R500,000 it would probably take from 15 to 20 years to map the country. We are prepared to spend more than R200,000,000 on defence, but it is absolutely necessary to spend far more money on mapping the country for defence purposes. I do not want to go into any details, but it is absolutely essential that we get on with the mapping of those areas in which we may have to defend the country, and I want to appeal to him to put this matter up to the Minister of Finance and to the Cabinet to increase this Vote, and in fact to double it. I am sure that if he doubles the Vote, the necessary personnel and equipment will be found to carry out this work.

I appreciate what the hon. member has said. We were in arrear with our mapping, and defence then asked us to make a special effort to expedite our mapping. We were restricted to some extent by the machines we had, but we have now acquired new ones and are getting more new ones, and we then came to an agreement with defence on the mapping of which parts is most important to them, and we have left much of our other mapping work, which also is very important, in abeyance specially to do the mapping work that was required by defence. We are now engaged on that, and I think defence is satisfied in general with the progress we are now making. But I agree with the hon. member that very much more can be done. However, this is an enormous country, and it will take a vast amount of time to map it all on a small scale. But defence is satisfied with what we are doing and we shall not leave the matter in abeyance. If there is going to be any change in expenditure on mapping in future, it will be an increase and not a reduction.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote No. 8,—“Forestry”, R1,480,000.

Last year when we discussed this Vote I asked the Minister what steps were being taken for improving the market overseas for wattle bark and wattle extract. He replied at that time that there was an officer of the Department overseas investigating the whole question. I asked further what the position would be because we, the producers of wattle bark, were suffering very much from the severe quota to which we were limited. I know we have our own marketing scheme under the Wattle Marketing Board, but they are not in a position to enter into international agreements. We know that the old agreement between the Argentine and South Africa fell away and that the Argentine was marketing a tremendous amount of que bracho which ruined the market in Europe, and also in the new markets we had started to establish in the Far East, but it was actually ruining it also for the wattle bark and chestnut producers in Europe. But if we did not limit our quantity very severely in the early stages it would have reduced our prices considerably. So to save what we could, we agreed amongst ourselves to a very severe quota. As I pointed out last year, the producer of wattle bark got such a small quota for the last 12 months that in many instances what he was allowed to market was not sufficient to cover his overheads and his marketing costs of what he could actually sell, and also to maintain his plantations in good order. He has to maintain fire-breaks and take various other control measures under the Soil Conservation Act which is in force throughout the midlands of Natal. Under the Wattle Bark Control Act he has certain other costly labour expenses and by the time he has met these expenses and marketed his products, he then finds that he has not enough left to cover his overheads and to cover the instalments to which he committed himself before there was any question of a quota. Even if he got a slightly reduced price he would have been better off under the old system because he could at least meet his commitments. I know that these producers are having a very difficult time. Some of them are switching over to sugar production in some areas. I ask the hon. the Minister what was being done to come to some new agreement when the old agreement lapsed. I would like to know whether he has any new information from the Argentine or those who are marketing que bracho in the European market in relation to the quantity of que bracho and the price of que bracho extract as against wattle extract and wattle bark sold on the European market. I may say something more about the subject when I hear the hon. the Minister’s reply, but pending the Minister’s reply I would like to raise the question of houses constructed of timber, about which a great deal has appeared in the Press as a means of reducing the housing shortage. We know that many local authorities have by-laws which prevent the building of wooden houses. Many of them are very loath to alter those bylaws. I would like to ask the hon. the Minister, who as we know, has been very interested in this matter, what has been done up to the present moment by the C.S.I.R. in this connection. We do know that the provincial administration of the Cape has put some questions to the C.S.I.R. in relation to the safety measures that should be taken as far as houses constructed of timber are concerned, and we know that investigations have been instituted but how far have those investigations proceeded? What investigations are taking place? What steps are being taken by the provincial authorities to get the local authorities to agree to the building of wooden houses in localities where timber is grown, where it is cheap and easily available and where wooden houses can be constructed expeditiously to relieve the present housing shortage? Sir, I think this is a burning question and one which needs the urgent attention of the Government, although we know that the provincial authorities and the local authorities are the bodies which are primarily interested in this question. I think that this is nevertheless a matter in which the Government should interest itself and on which it should have discussions with the provincial authorities. I think the Government should see to it that the C.S.I.R. gets busy and that it should arrange a conference of all concerned to go into this whole matter of the construction of wooden houses.

It is with some degree of nostalgia for the good old days that I participate in the discussions under the Forestry Vote. I recall a warm summer’s afternoon in 1938 when I sat here in the public gallery and the hon. member for Humansdorp (Mr. Sauer) did not hide his somnolence at all. The then member for George then took the floor and I had an opportunity of listening to one of his well-known pleas for assistance and aid for the lumbermen of George and for an improvement of their wages. I am referring to the late Mr. Werth. The hon. member for Humansdorp listened attentively while the hon. member for George was speaking, and subsequently, when I had gained more experience, it occurred to me that in the forests of the Tsitsikama in the constituency of Humansdorp there also were many lumbermen. I never thought throughout the years, that I would have occasion to have to draw the attention of the same hon. member for Humansdorp to the fate and the circumstances of the Coloured lumbermen of the Outeniqua area and the Tsitsikama.

As the hon. the Minister knows, there are a large number of Coloured lumbermen in the Department of Forestry, particularly in the George, Knysna and Tsitsikama areas. I do not propose to make a long speech on the matter; I have here a letter from a responsible person, an attorney at George who holds the B.A., LL.B. degrees and who writes as follows (translation)—

Mr. Chairman, I have read this letter, but I can speak from first-hand knowledge of the conditions under which these people are living there in the employ of the Department of Forestry. These facts speak for themselves; the facts are correct, and I should like to urge the hon. the Minister to avail himself of the opportunity to give some relief in the conditions under which the people are working for the Department of Forestry there, Sir, it will be a wonderful gesture on the part of the Minister to these people of whom he in general has great knowledge in consequence of his long political career in the Cape Province, if now at the end of his ministerial career he were to make such an announcement here which I shall gladly convey to those I represent there and who are asking for this relief. It will afford me great pleasure to be able to tell my Coloured voters that the hon. the Minister of Forestry, the hon. member for Humansdorp, went out of his way at the end of his ministerial career to improve their lot and their circumstances there.

I should just like to say that within a few months we shall be taking leave here of the hon. the Minister as a Minister after a long and honourable career in the House of Assembly and after a career of 16 years as Minister. After all the expressions of praise uttered here, it will not be fitting for me to go further along those lines, but I think I can say, on behalf of all the ex-Stellenbosch students sitting in this House, that we shall not lightly forget the hospitality and the reception we received at the residence of the hon. member for Humansdorp at Stellenbosch during our student days. Nor shall we ever forget the wonderful hostess we found in that house.

In conclusion I just want to ask the hon. the Minister to consider my plea here in the spirit in which I delivered it. It is extremely essential that serious attention should be given on the part of the responsible White Government, to the circumstances under which the Coloured lumbermen in general are living in those areas. On another occasion I shall deal with the deplorable conditions in which Coloured farm labourers in the Outeniqua Tsitsikama areas are living. This is not the occasion to deal with the circumstances in which they are living in other respects, but I should like to ask the hon. the Minister on this occasion please to give his earnest attention to the matter and to give the Coloured lumbermen as much relief as possible. Our problem in this country at the present time is that we have to import Europeans from overseas at great expense because we have a manpower shortage. We have non-Whites in the Department of Forestry who can be trained to do work done at the present time by White people, and by so doing we shall release Whites for training in other work for which we have to import people at the present time. We have the requisite Coloured manpower in that area. We merely have to hold out the prospect to them that when they accept employment in the Department of Forestry, they will be eligible for training in skilled work, because they have the aptitude for it, as they have shown already. When a Coloured person accepts employment in the Department, we should offer him a prospect that he will be earning a wage that will be sufficient to support his family, and to educate his children. If that happens, we shall get from the forests of Knysna, George and the Tsitsikama not only Coloured people living in poverty, but people who have attained the requisite educational standard that will enable them to be trained further to take their place and pull their weight as citizens of South Africa, and to produce the labour force required.

I should like the hon. the Minister to consider whether there should not be a review of the structure of the Department of Forestry. There are large areas— and my constituency is a typical example— of forests administered directly by the Department; then there are large areas of forests privately owned and managed, and then we have large areas of State-owned land which the Minister’s Department is putting under afforestation as the agent of the Native Trust. It is in these circumstances that one appreciates that the Department has two functions. It functions as a normal Government Department with overall control of all aspects of forestry, including its own forests, and it also functions as a private timber-grower in that it competes in the timber market with the private sector of that industry. Sir, the impact of this can be illustrated if one bears in mind that the Department apparently reserves for itself the right to supply timber which is used by Government Departments to a large extent, but in addition to that it competes in other spheres with the private sector of the industry. My information is that it is the largest supplier of saw-logs to the private sawmills, and that fact gives it a tremendous influence as far as the conditions under which those logs are supplied are concerned. Sir, should there not be a review of the structure of the Department in the light of those circumstances? Should there not be an exploration into the prospect of dividing the Department so that its supervisory functions, that is to say the functions of a normal Government Department, the functions of research and the function of administration of forests generally, will be divorced from its functions as a timbergrower and as a competitor in the timber industry? The Department of Forestry is engaged in growing and selling timber, and one feels that that aspect of its business should more properly be regulated by the Department of Commerce and Industry, and the hon. the Minister might consider setting up some sort of State corporation to run the commercial side of his Department’s undertakings, and that corporation could then compete on equal terms with the private sector under the auspices of the Department of Commerce and Industries. Sir, these are considerations which occur to one if one has some slight insight, which is all I have, into the timber enterprises in South Africa to-day.

Earlier in this debate this afternoon the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood) raised the question of the growing use of timber in the construction of houses to overcome the housing shortage. One is glad to see that timber is being used in that sphere and that the prejudices which have existed for many years in South Africa against timber houses seem to be falling away. But here again I think the Department of Forestry could take a lead in undertaking research and in spreading the popularity of that type of housing and in persuading the municipalities to change their building by-laws in this regard and in making compulsory the grading of South African pine timber which is used for building purposes. As I understand the position, efforts have been made for the grading of that type of timber to be done on a voluntary basis. There are a number of reasons, of which I am sure the hon. the Minister is aware, why that has failed. I think if a lead were taken by the Department in that sphere, the construction of housing from timber would proceed apace. But, of course, here again the point which I made at the beginning of my speech this afternoon comes to the fore because the Minister’s Department would then be in the position that it would have to regulate and grade timber produced by his own Department, which might create difficulties, whereas if the growing and the marketing section of his Department were separated to function as a unit on its own that difficulty would not arise.

The hon. member for Zululand (Mr. Cadman) and the hon. member for Pietermaritzburg (District) (Capt. Henwood) have touched on the question of wooden houses. I think hon. members know how strongly I feel on this question. I have been asked what progress has been made with the investigations by the C.S.I.R. into the possibility or the advantages of wooden housing. I am informed that they are at present preparing a code of practice for materials to be used in wooden houses. The Wood Promotion Council is making representations to public authorities to amend their by-laws so as to allow the construction of wooden houses. The Wood Promotion Council is a council to which all the timber interests belong, including the Department, and the function of the council is to promote the use of timber. That is my answer to the hon. member for Zululand in reply to his question as to whether we should not take the lead in trying to persuade people of the advantages of timber houses and in trying to influence the local authorities to alter their building by-laws. We are not taking the lead; the Wood Promotion Council is taking the lead. As I have said, we are a member of that council and I think we are having a large amount of success. I believe that in the very near future we are going to have considerably more success. The hon. the Minister of Housing already has a vast housing scheme on his hands and he is extremely interested in using wood or timber by-products for the construction of housing, but the difficulties that he came up against was the municipal building regulations which are framed under ordinances of the provincial councils. I think I am not saying anything that I should not say when I say that he had an interview with the Administrators a week or two ago, where the Administrators agreed that in these Government housing schemes the municipal regulations can be overridden, that is to say, that Government Departments will be able to build wooden houses notwithstanding the regulations of the different municipalities. Well, if that takes place it will knock the bottom out of all those regulations. I regard this as the biggest break-through for wooden housing that we have ever had in South Africa. If wooden houses are going to be constructed notwithstanding the existing municipal regulations, then nobody will be able to stop this break-through, and these very old and obsolete regulations of the various municipalities will simply have to be withdrawn. I think we are on the verge of a very big break-through with regard to wooden houses.

The hon. member for Zululand also spoke about the dual functions of the Department —its functions on the one hand as the biggest individual producer of timber in South Africa, in fact the producer of half the timber in South Africa, and on the other hand its functions as a research body, a body for promoting the interests of timber growers, of the timber trade and of the millers, and its function of giving advice and help to plantation owners. Its functions, as far as forestry is concerned, are comparable with the functions of the Department of Agricultural Technical Services. The hon. member is quite correct in saying that these are the two functions of the Department. In fact the hon. member is so correct that I wondered whether he had not read a speech which I had made somewhere with regard to this matter. If he has not read this speech of mine then I think this was a piece of very clever individual thinking on his part! I may say that we are giving our attention to this whole matter. It is a big setup. The production side of it is getting so big that my feeling is that it cannot continue to be run as a State Department under ordinary Civil Service rules and regulations. The Railways, for example, are not run under ordinary Government departmental regulations. If they had to do so then trade would probably come to a standstill. It is very difficult to run a business under rules laid down for the running of a State Department. We are heading in that direction therefore; we are giving this matter our very careful attention and I hope that my successor will be able to do something along those lines. I think the time is very close at hand, if it has not already arrived, when something will have to be done to define the different functions of the Department of Forestry.

As far as the wattle industry is concerned, the hon. member is probably aware of the fact that practically all the functions which my Department had in the past with regard to the wattle industry have been passed over to the board which is being established under an Act of Parliament which I piloted through this House two years ago.

They cannot make international agreements.

The board cannot make international agreements but the board is the body which has to prepare the way towards international agreements. The board is functioning very well indeed. I have had no complaints whatsoever about this functioning of the board. The whole wattle position has been improved. According to a statement made by the board, the price of wattle products, both extract and bark, will be increased from 1 September. There is even a hint that an “agterskot” may be paid. Whether it will be paid I do not know. The expected results are being achieved. Whether they will be able to increase the quota I do not know. But there is one thing which many wattle growers will have to accept and that is that in areas which are not the best wattle-production areas in South Africa and where the people started to produce wattle because a high price was paid for wattle bark at that time, those people will never be able to go back to the production of wattle. They are not in areas in which wattle should have been grown. A tremendous amount of wattle was produced with the result that a surplus was created. Those people producing wattle in areas which are not really wattle-producing areas will have to give up wattle production completely.

In the meantime we have suffered.

I know, but that is due to a large extent to the fact that these people in fringe areas started producing wattle. They will have to go out; they must not expect to get quotas. I hope that the position will improve. We have not been able to make any headway with the discussions that we had with the Argentine. It looks as though the Argentine wanted to co-operate with us and then for some reason or other they dropped the negotiations altogether. We have no lever with which we can force them. We tried to arrive at an agreement and they seemed willing to discuss the matter further. An agreement was made that after certain events there they would renew discussions with us, but the initiative to renew the discussions was to come from the Argentine and they have not renewed the discussions.

The hon. member for Outeniqua (Mr. Holland) raised the question of Coloured lumbermen. I may just mention to him that the wages we are paying are based upon local wages. We are paying the wages that are paid locally in any area for Coloured labour, not the lowest local wages, but the best for that class of labour. That is what we are paying the people there. I just want to say that in other respects we are doing a tremendous lot for our Coloured labourers there. We have now obtained a design for homes for our Coloured labourers, the standard of which is far above any dwelling provided by any municipality in that area. We propose to spend, during the next five years, about R3,000,000 on better housing for our White and Coloured labourers. There will be a sufficient number of this new type of housing for all the Coloureds in our employ there. If the hon. member will come to my office, we shall show him the models of the dwellings we propose to build, there. I think he will agree that it will be a great improvement on the present position, and that it will build up the people’s self-respect, because when a man lives in a house like that, he must retain his self-respect. We have made a great contribution this year, and we are going to make a great contribution over the next four years to the upliftment of the Coloureds in that area.

I want to refer to subhead E “Camping Sites on Forest Reserves”. The Minister knows that he has had to sacrifice the bulk of his forest areas between the Keiskama River and the Kei to Bantu Affairs. He only has a few sections left, sections which are known as “foreshores”, on which there are camping sites. I see the amount is R10,000. I want to put it to the Minister that there must be some unfairness in the allocation of these camping sites. The hon. the Minister will recall that representations have been made to him from various sections between the Buffalo River and the Kei, sections on which there were camping sites. When he handed over parts of that foreshore, parts which had been used for camping sites for 50, 60 or 70 years, they were immediately abolished by the local authority. A few sections still exist; the local authority has not yet taken over there. I want to ask the hon. the Minister whether he will not deal with those people on the same basis as he deals with other parts of the foreshore in the Republic and give them a more secure period of tenure so that they can erect something more substantial in which to spend their four or six weeks’ holiday at the coast.

Why are the municipalities breaking them up?

I will start with Kaiser’s Beach. As the Minister will recall representations were made to him for the maintenance of Kaiser’s Beach where they conformed in every respect with the requirements of what might be a sea-side cottage. The Minister handed the whole of that area over to the East London Divisional Council. The first thing that happened was that the local authority came along and asked the owners to abolish their structures or to make certain improvements. After making many of those improvements they were still called upon to pull them down. Some of those camping sites, particularly at Haga-Haga, have been in the hands of those individuals for a period of 90 years. Why should they now be ousted? They are little buildings which conform to reasonable health requirements; water is not a problem. They go down there once a year on holiday. Why can they not continue to do so? If they are going to be handed over to the local authorities it will mean the abandon ment of all the camping sites between the Buffalo and the Kei Rivers. I want to appeal to the hon. the Minister to review this whole position. Those camping sites have been in existence for years. Farmers come down as far as from the Free State to camp down there. I should like the Minister to review the position not in the light of what I have just said but in the light of information I am prepared to give to him at a later stage.

Under the Forestry Vote I should like to also pay tribute to the work the hon. the Minister has done for this Department in particular. He has been the Minister administering this Department for the past five years. Before that people had gained the impression that Forestry was one of the Cinderella departments of State because ministerial control of the Department so frequently changed hands. Consequently there was very little question of continuity of ministerial policy in respect of Forestry. The hon. the Minister has been in charge of this Department for the past five years, and one has observed the fruits of a policy of continuity. Under his guidance this Department has acquired a status, as it were.

I should like particularly to pay tribute to his contribution in respect of research. There are various research institutes for forestry, and at the University of Stellenbosch there is a Faculty of Forestry too where the allowance for research has during the past year been increased by about R30,000. This Department has grown under the hon. the Minister from one which was there merely for the planting of trees and the sale thereof, to one which has taken the lead in propagating and making known one of our most useful South African products. I particularly wish to pay tribute to the role played by the hon. the Minister in that regard. He has made the building industry aware of the value and the quality of our indigenous South African timbers for industrial purposes. But under his guidance the Department has also branched out into other spheres. The one I wish to refer to to-day is that of participation in the conservation of our soil. Recently I had the privilege to see from the air the terrific damage caused by wind erosion along our coastal areas—on the west coast as well as on the south-west coast. As a result of wind erosion and the poor covering of the soil along the coast where the winds can blow very furiously, virtual creeping deserts have arisen. This Department has now taken it upon itself to take over from the Department of Agricultural Technical Services the responsibility of combating the danger of creeping, deserts. The Department fights this danger by dispossessing private owners of the areas in question and by fencing these areas and planting shrubs and plants, and that is preventing the danger presented by this creeping desert. I should just like to know from the hon. the Minister what progress has been made with this policy of participating through the Department of Forestry, in the fight against this danger along our coasts.

I was very interested in the Minister’s reply in relation to wooden houses. But he rather missed the gist of some of my remarks and my questions to him. I am very pleased indeed to hear that the State scheme will include wooden houses and that they will go ahead with their housing scheme and that it will not be necessary to obtain the approval of the local authority. But I want the ordinary man in the street to be allowed to build a wooden house, in view of the shortage of materials and artisans and builders to build an ordinary brick and iron house. He should be allowed to build a wooden house just as the State is embarking on a wooden-housing scheme; he should be allowed to build it under the same conditions. I hope the hon. the Minister will take this question further. That was why I asked him how far the C.S.I.R. had progressed in its investigations into the safety factor of wooden houses. We want the ordinary man in the street to be able to build his own wooden house on his own plot but the ordinary local authority will not allow him to do so. They refuse to pass his building plans. I do not see any reason why he should not be allowed to do so in an area where such a wooden house will not detract from any building scheme and if it conforms with the provision regarding value in that area. A wooden house can be very pretty. You have them throughout Canada and America. I cannot see why we cannot utilize South African timber with great advantage in this country. I know it is the right of the local authorities, through the jurisdiction of the provincial authority, who administers the local authority, and keeps an eye on their by-laws and so forth, to refuse permission for such buildings but I want the hon. the Minister to call a conference of the responsible authorities where this question of wooden housing can be discussed, so that the ordinary man in the street can get on with the job and erect his own home, or a private housing scheme, if necessary; it need not only be a State scheme.

I want to make myself completely clear to the hon. member who has just sat down. I am just as keen as he is on making it possible for any person to build a wooden house inside any municipal area if it complies with the requirements and regulations of that municipality. It is necessary to say that a house must comply with certain regulations but it must not be said that a house does not comply with those regulations because it is made of wood. The C.S.I.R. is now drawing up a code which will be available to the different municipalities. They will in future be able to say that if a wooden house is built according to this code they will pass it, in the same way as they have a code in respect of houses built of brick. If somebody applies for permission to build a house and that house complies with that code, his plans are passed. We want the same position in the case of wooden houses. If a wooden house complies with the code it should be sufficiënt guarantee of its suitability.

The hon. member then went further and asked me to persuade the Provincial Administrations. But I did have a conference last year with the Administrators in Pretoria. I appealed to them to use their influence with the local authorities to allow the building of wooden houses. I know as well as the hon. member how suitable and comfortable wooden houses are. But that is not the question. The question is the prejudice which exists amongst local authorities against wooden houses. In the old days a wooden house was an old tin and iron affair with a few planks in it—that was called a wooden house. Local authorities still think in terms of that when you speak about a house made of wood.

The second break-through we have made is that the Minister of Housing will now have the power, under his housing scheme, to build wooden houses or houses made of wood derivatives. If he is empowered by the provincial authorities to do that, notwithstanding what local regulations may exist, it is impossible for the local authorities to adhere to the old regulations. It will be absolutely ridiculous for them to have a regulation prohibiting the building of a certain type of house while the Government comes along and builds them and the people see that they are first-class. That was the break-through I spoke about a few minutes ago.

The hon. member for King William’s Town (Mr. Warren) has raised the hardy annual namely the camping sites along the coast. Some of them belong to the Department of Forestry and some to the Department of Lands. People come to the Department of Forestry and ask for permission to build a shack there. We cannot say: “All right, we shall give you a site” and refuse to give somebody else a site. So in course of time maybe 20 to 30 shacks are erected. It is not our job to provide the necessary amenities. It is not our job to see that these shacks are properly spaced or whether they are healthy and hygienic or whether the sanitary arrangements are satisfactory or whether the water we supply to them is fit for human consumption. Somebody has to assume control. It is not our job to build roads or to provide electricity. What we try to do is to get local authorities to take control. We say to them: Here is a camping site which we are handing over to you so that you can control it. We tell them that they can pocket the rents they charge in payment of the work they are going to do. The hon. member’s complaints are that after we have done that, which seems the sensible thing to do, some local bodies object to the type of house that has been built and demands that it be demolished. I hope the hon. member realizes the difficult position in which we find ourselves. If that piece of ground had been handed over to the local authority right from the start they would not have bull-dozed those houses, because those houses would have had to comply with the standard laid down by that local authority. The houses which have been bull-dozed were houses that did not comply with the standard. Perhaps they were not hygienic; perhaps they were not aesthetic, although I have never known a camping shack to have any aspirations to be aesthetic.

The houses that were bulldozed at Kaiser’s Beach were better than anything you will find anywhere else.

I do not know what took place at Kaiser’s Beach but the hon. member will see our difficulty. We cannot allow these camping sites to develop haphazardly. Somebody has got to control them. Somebody has to see that the necessary amenities are there, that it is properly planned, that there are sanitary arrangements, etc. I think it is advisable for us to hand over the control to some local authority. The hon. member has one or two grievances against the East London Divisional Council. I am sorry they have done that but I think the hon. member will agree that there is nothing wrong with the system of handing it over to some responsible body, a body which works with this sort of authority. They have the staff and the knowledge. We have not. Mistakes may be made by local bodies but it still remains the best way of dealing with this situation and to see that these sites are properly planned.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Revenue Vote No. 9,—“Public Works”, R23,949,000 and Loan Vote B,—“Public Works”, R22,300,000,

I want to raise the matter of new magistrates’ courts for Durban. As the hon. the Minister will know this is a matter which has been raised in this House for many years. It is a matter which has been raised by many interested persons and bodies in Durban. On 27 April 1962, a question was put to the hon. the Minister of Justice by the hon. member for Umbilo (Mr. Oldfield). Part of the question was “whether new magistrates’ courts for Durban are to be erected and, if so, what progress has been made in this regard”. The answer was: “Yes. The site has already been acquired and the planning of the project will commence as soon as possible.” I then raised the matter under the Vote of the hon. Minister of Justice on 18 June 1962. During the course of that debate the hon. the Minister said as far as his Department was concerned it was regarded as priority number one.

In January 1964 I put a question to the hon. the Minister of Public Works asking him what the position was in regard to the new magistrates’ courts. His reply was: “drawings of the proposed new building are now being prepared but in view of the magnitude of the scheme it is not possible at this stage to give a reliable indication as to when actual construction will commence. Funds have also not yet been voted for this service”. I find it most disappointing that no provision has been made under the Vote of the Minister of Public Works for new magistrates’ courts. This is particularly so in view of the situation which exists and which, as I have already said, has justified the Minister of Justice to say that this should be regarded as priority number one.

Order! I have had an opportunity of referring to the Loan Vote. There is no provision for this service. The hon. member should raise this matter under the Justice Vote.

Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, or perhaps on a point of elucidation, may I ask the hon. the Minister …

Order! The hon. member must accept my ruling.

Mr. Chairman …

Order! Will the hon. member please resume his seat …

Sir, on a point of order, I do not Wish to challenge your ruling. I merely wish to get elucidation as to which Minister is responsible.

I have given the hon. member guidance. He must raise this matter under the Vote of the Minister of Justice.

Before the hon. the Minister relinquishes the post he has filled with such distinction for so many years I would like to raise the question of the public buildings at East London. I see only R50 is down on the Estimates for this year. I should like to know whether he is prepared to give some priority to these public buildings because they have actually been under discussion for the past eight years. My predecessor and his predecessor actually raised this matter.

Order! The hon. member must refer to a particular service.

I think you will find it on page 50. I am trying to help you.

Yes, that is correct. R1,140,000. It is a very big proposition. I believe the stage has actually been reached where the plans are completed. But the plans are now in the hands of the Public Works Department and it is only for the Minister to give the signal for the builders to get on with the job. I wonder whether the Minister will be able to give us some priority before he relinquishes his post. His successor may possibly take some time to go into matters and we may have further delays, although I hope not a delay of another eight years. During the eight years we have been waiting East London has been growing rapidly and there is extreme congestion in these public buildings. One of the courts has been divided in half, making two very small courts. The position which obtains is certainly not consistent with the needs of a court in which the circuit court judge has to sit. The other Departments are also scattered all over East London and there is similar congestion. I therefore hope that these public buildings will now be treated as matters of urgency.

I want to go on to another item which has already been referred to, namely, the airport buildings. There we have a job which is half-baked or half-completed—perhaps half-completed is a better term. The airport was recently remodelled. An additional cross runway was constructed with the result that the main approach road was cut off. The traffic now has to go a considerable distance around, adding a good deal of extra mileage every year to both the vehicles of the Department and of private people in order to reach East London. At the present time, as the road leaves the airport for East London, it first turns west, then south, then north, then west again, then south and eventually east in the direction of East London. This adds many miles to the distance. As soon as the new buildings are put up in the new position many miles will be saved in the course of the year to the transport to East London. Apart from that the air traffic in that area has increased considerably. To-day no fewer than 37 air services pass through East London per week. The passengers all have to get out of the plane while it is being refuelled and the publicity effect on the S.A. Airways must be extremely detrimental because of the primitive buildings these passengers have to go to. They are actually pre-war hutments which have been adapted for the time being. In the circumstances I hope the Monster will be able to give me some assurance that we shall soon have the new buildings.

The publicity effect of the East London airport on the South African Airways is nothing compared with the publicity effect of that airport on East London itself. Because people who get off the planes at that airport and go to those buildings think East London is just like the airport. But they are not quite right. The hon. member for East London (North) (Mr. Field) has been allowed to speak on this matter and the hon. member for Musgrave (Mr. Hourquebie) was not. The hon. member for East London (North) has managed to do so by a mere R50; the R50 which appears on the Estimates. I can assure the hon. member that both these buildings are progressing considerably. The first stage is of course to acquire the land; the next stage is the planning of the building by the architects from whom those plans have to go to the quantity surveyors. When the quantity surveyors have finished with the plans you can then draw up the schedules for tenders. The architects take the longest time about it; the quantity surveyors do not take so long. The architects have handed in their plans in regard to both these buildings and those plans are now in the hands of the quantity surveyors. This means that within a comparatively short time we shall be able to call for tenders.

Votes put and agreed to.

On Revenue Vote No. 10.—“Treasury”, R1,125,000,

I think it would perhaps be useful if I make a brief announcement here in regard to a few matters emanating from my Budget speech—useful to hon. members on both sides of the House, so that they may have the opportunity to consider these matters and put their thoughts in order.

The first matter to which I wish to refer is that in regard to non-resident bonds. In my Budget speech I pointed out that the conditions of the old 3½ per cent three-year bonds for non-residents were really too favourable and that these bonds would be replaced by a new issue on more realistic conditions. These bonds were originally intended to give the overseas investor in South African shares the opportunity to realize his investment and to withdraw his money over a reasonable period and on reasonable conditions. These conditions were, however, so favourable that some overseas speculators, who perhaps had never before invested in South African shares, had the opportunity to buy shares in London, to sell them at a profit in Johannesburg, and then to invest the proceeds in these three-year bonds—an attractive investment for them, but not really what we originally intended. I must further point out that there are surely few overseas investors who bought South African shares before June 1961, i.e. before control was applied to the transfer of capital, and who cannot to-day sell their shares at a good profit on the London Stock Exchange. I do not want to close this door completely. It is, however, difficult to determine on realistic conditions, because the proceeds for the overseas investor in such bonds varies with the difference between the prices of South African shares in London and Johannesburg —something which continually varies. The best solution appears to be to issue these bonds on tender, i.e. almost in the same way as Treasury bills are issued. These bonds will not be interest-bearing and will be repaid at face value after five years, and the proceeds will then be transferred to the investor. The bonds will, however, be transferable, just like our ordinary Treasury bills, so that if the investor wants his money before the five years have elapsed, he will be able to sell his bonds to another non-resident. Tenders will be awaited monthly, and the State will of course not be compelled to accept any tenders. In fact, a floor price will be announced every month as a guide for prospective investors. The maximum amount which will be accepted will also be indicated every month. In view of the fact that in my Budget speech I said I expected a total amount of R25,000,000 for the financial year 1964-5, the maximum amount in the beginning will be R3,000,000 a month, i.e. the first month.

It will of course take a little time to make arrangements for these new issues and the first tenders will probably not be received before the beginning of August. The prospectuses will, however, be issued as speedily as possible. I want to emphasize that this scheme is of course subject to revision in the light of circumstances.

The two matters to which I should like to refer are, firstly, the export of South African bank notes by travellers. South Africans who travel abroad are at present allowed to take with them bank notes to an amount of R200-R100 in South African and R100 in foreign bank notes. This concession has, however, led to abuse. It is not really necessary for any traveller who goes abroad to take with him more than a few rand in South African notes, in order to be able to defray a few minor items of expenditure on his return to the Republic. South African travellers will therefore, as from 16 May not be allowed to take with them more than R20 in South African bank notes, although the total amount of all bank notes, i.e. South African and foreign bank notes, will remain unchanged at R200. The total amount is therefore not limited. The limitation applies only to South African notes. This, however, does not apply to travellers overland to Rhodesia or Portuguese East Africa. For them the existing limits will remain unchanged. The new limits do not at all affect the existing maximum limitation of the money which South African travellers may take abroad with them in the form of travellers’ cheques or otherwise.

The third matter to which I wish to refer is in regard to the surplus for the year ended 31 March 1964. In my Budget speech I estimated the surplus on Revenue Account for the year at R88,000,000. I am gratified and grateful to be able to inform the House that it now appears that this surplus will be appreciably higher. The final figure is, however, not yet available, and certain adjustments still have to be made also. The indications, however, are that the surplus will be approximately R40,000,000 higher than my previous estimate. [Interjections.] Sir, I am surprised that hon. members opposite do not say “Hear, hear”. In any case, this increase can be ascribed in the first instance to the fact that the revenue is approximately R20,000,000, or 2 per cent, higher than we expected. Of this amount, R16,000,000 is due to higher collections of income tax. I have already repeatedly said that in the first year of the Pay-As-You-Earn system it would be particularly difficult to estimate the revenue, and the high collections during the last month of the financial year surprised my Department. Just like the higher collections of customs and excise (R3,000,000), it is of course another indication of the continued prosperity and growth of our economy.

The expenditure will also be approximately R20,000,000, or 2 per cent less than we expected. The main reason for this is an underexpenditure of approximately R15,000,000 by the Department of Defence as the result of delays in the completion of certain large contracts. These large contracts are always a source of uncertainty, and practically until the very last moment it is very difficult to say when payment will have to be made.

I stated that I was gratified at and grateful for this large surplus, because it gives us the opportunity to use this windfall for certain very useful purposes. However, I wish to warn against any idea of setting to work lavishly and of spending this amount in an extravagant manner.

Firstly, I must draw the attention of the House to the fact that the revenue for 1963-4 included certain non-recurrent elements. Taxation collected in respect of previous tax years amounted to approximately R55,000,000, but the corresponding amount for 1964-5 is expected to be appreciably smaller, approximately R28,000,000. Further, in 1964-5, an amount of R6,000,000 or more will have to be repaid to individual taxpayers in respect of excessive deductions under the pay-as-you-earn system in 1963-4.

Even more important is the necessity in these times of general prosperity to do nothing which may encourage inflation. It would definitely be wrong and irresponsible to devote this increased surplus to reducing taxation, increased ordinary expenditure or even the reduction of internal debt, because that would just bring more money into circulation.

The increased revenue, R20,000,000 for 1963-4, also necessitates a review of our estimated revenue for 1964-5. I think the latter must be increased by R18,000,000. Therefore together with the increased surplus we now have R58,000,000 available. It is a very responsible task to make suitable proposals for the expenditure of this amount, because I do not regard it as an ordinary Budget surplus. Although it would not be right under the present circumstances to devote this money to reducing taxation—for the same reasons that I mentioned in my Budget speech—I do feel that an appreciable portion of it should be kept back for the taxpayer. It should, as it were, be kept in trust for him until economic and fiscal circumstances permit of its being given back to him, either in the form of reduced taxation or in order to avoid increased taxation. I cannot say when it will be desirable to release this money—perhaps next year, or perhaps only in three or four years’ time. But in the meantime I propose putting aside R20,000,000 in a new Taxation Reserve Account for this purpose. Unless economic and fiscal conditions develop quite differently from what I expect, we shall not draw on this account this year. Defence will probably in the coming years still require large amounts from the Treasury, and I think it is right that portion of this windfall be set aside for that purpose. I therefore propose transferring R20,000,000 to the Special Defence Equipment Fund. Here also the intention is not that this money should be spent during the financial year. There are two further reasons for this allocation. In the first place, it is really a re-voting of the R15,000,000 which was not spent by the Department of Defence this year, but it is also a way of keeping this money in trust for the taxpayers, because it means that the demand made on the Treasury next year will be so much less.

I feel, however, that we should also take this opportunity to do something special for the development of our country. In my opinion it would be wrong to utilize a large amount of the available money for the extension of the ordinary State functions. We should rather set this money aside for something extraordinary, to stimulate the development of our country. I therefore propose that R15,000,000 be transferred to a special development account. For the time being I call it the “Fund for the Development of Strategic Natural Resources”, but if hon. members can think of a better name I will accept it. From this fund, whatever its name may be, I intend making available money, e.g. for prospecting for or the development of oil resources or other strategic minerals in South Africa. The Government may further consider using this fund to encourage the development of low-grade gold ore, because in the present circumstances gold must also be regarded as a strategic mineral. For the same reason this fund may also suitably be used to prolong the lives of certain marginal mines. The fund will, in other words, be available for the development of our natural resources in order to strengthen our country economically and strategically. I do not expect that this fund will be used to the full during the year 1964-5; the disbursement of the money in the fund will probably be spread over a number of years.

There are three other matters of a particular nature which deserve attention, although they fall within the scope of the normal State functions. The first is the question of the drought conditions in the Northern Transvaal. We all know how this area has suffered during the past year, and I am sure that all hon. members would like to do something to temper the consequences of a repetition of such conditions in a tangible and permanent manner. At least a portion of this area can receive relief by increasing the height of the walls of certain State dams so that more water can be conserved to be used in times of drought. Approximately R2,000,000 will be made available for this purpose as a non-recurrent grant. This money will be provided in the Supplementary Estimates and the work will be tackled without delay. My colleague, the Minister of Water Affairs, will provide details when a suitable occasion offers.

The second special matter which justifies an extraordinary non-recurrent grant is the housing of our aged. I feel that it will find general favour if we devote portion of the available money for this purpose, and an amount of approximately R750,000 will be provided in the Supplementary Estimates. For the building of old-age homes, the bodies concerned can obtain loans from the State in terms of a certain formula, but they themselves must divide the money for the purchase and levelling of the site. In some cases these associations find it very difficult to obtain the necessary money for this purpose. The amount which will now be made available can be used, inter alia, for this purpose, i.e. as a non-recurrent grant to enable the bodies concerned, in approved cases, to purchase the necessary site for an old-age home and to level it. My colleague, the Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions, will in due course submit further details to the House.

The third object I have in mind is the purchase of works of art by the State. I am very glad to see that the private sector is increasingly recognizing its duty in regard to promoting art and that certain private undertakings have already granted ample support for the graphic arts. However, the State also has a duty in this regard. It sometimes happens that an art collection becomes available for purchase by the State, and I think it is desirable that money should then be available for that purpose. An amount of R250,000 will consequently be voted for that object.

Mr. Chairman, we are really grateful for having the opportunity to do something to deal with these particular problems I have mentioned, and I trust that the objects for which we want to use the available money will enjoy the general support of the House.

If the surplus is less than expected, the amount for the Special Defence Account will be reduced. If the surplus is higher, the rest will remain in the Revenue Account.

I am glad to have had the opportunity of making this statement to-night so that hon. members will have ample opportunity to study it. I do not want them to applaud it now already; we can wait until to-morrow.

House Resumed:

Progress reported.