SUPERANNUATION DEFAULT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 263, 5 November 1932, Page 8

SUPERANNUATION DEFAULT.

THE STATE'S RESPONSIBILITY.

(To the Editor.)

Your correspondent "Economy" has strange notions about .public honour and morality. Unfortunately they seem to be largely shared ■by the electorate of New Zealand. As an annuitant of the State superannuation fund (embodying the public, railways and teaching services), I ask your space to place before the public the plain issues, as they appear to me. The attacks on the State fund, and, indeed, the proposals of the National Economy Commission now before Parliament in legislative shape, imply that public servants alone enjoy the benefit of a, secured old age. But this is far from being the truth. The State fund is only one of many other superannuation funds—municipal, harbour, hospital and other boards, banking, insurance and similar institutions and commercial firms all have them, and many of their retired servants are , to-day in receipt of substantial pensions. There is no suggestion that their funds or retiring allowances should be attacked or reduced. Why? Because these semi-public and private employers have honourably carried out their paTt of their superannuation bargain with their servants and paid in the yearly subsidies necessary to enable their pension obligations •to be met. So it has been left to the State, regularly and deliberately over the years, to default in payment of the subsidies it undertook to make as its share of the superannuation contract made with its servants and to lull Public Service contributors into a sense of false security with the assurance that the fund had the guarantee and good faith of the State behind it, safeguarding superannuation rights, even though the cash subsidies were (from the point o£ view of the various Governments) being better employed to satisfy the clamorous appetite of the constituencies. And now when the testing time comes the State, whoso default has brought the fund to its present parlous condition, says to its servants, '■'The need demands; necessity knows no law; your contract is to be torn up." Public memory seems to be short-lived. I speak only, as a retired public servant because we retired; servants are helpless and can no longer con- , sider alternatives that would have been open to us could we have possibly have anticipated , that the State would at the first stress of circumstances ask us to bear the full measure of its grievous default. STATE ANNUITANT. ;