ANOTHER CUT IN PENSIONS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 201, 24 August 1940, Page 5 (Supplement)

ANOTHER CUT IN PENSIONS

THE recent pronouncement of the Arbitration Court increasing wages, writes "Trooper," foreshadows another "cut" in pensions, and in the pay and allowances of our serving soldiers. Wives of ex-service pensioners and serving men will find their already difficult problem of balancing the family budget even more difficult, if not impossible. While I believe this method of increasing wages to meet increasing living costs to be folly, building, as it were, an inverted pyramid, which can only crash, I submit that some cognisance must be taken by the Government responsible for the lot of pensioners. Measures are overdue to offset the reduction in their already meagre standard of life, and that of the wives and children of men now serving their country ip the army. Each and every one of these people is anxious, I am sure, to do their best to prosecute this "new" war, as many of them did actively in its first phase—rbefore the "Armistice" of 1918; but when this sacrifice is being called from them to the advantage of otherj. it is time we had some pronouncement from the Government as to its views on "equality of sacrifice," and how it intends to attempt to bring this within the realm of practical realisation.