SOCIAL SECURITY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 181, 2 August 1941, Page 10

SOCIAL SECURITY

"NEW ORDER" IDEAS AUSTRALIAN SUGGESTIONS (0.C.) SYDNEY. July 26. A lot has been heard this week about the new social order because the Federal Parliamentary Committee on Social Security has been sitting in Sydney. The New South Wales Labour Council secretary, Mr. 11. King, said he believed Socialism was the only way of securing real social security, but suggested that meantime the Government should use the full resources of the Commonwealth Bank to finance a scheme of insurance. "The new order should begin now," he said, "otherwise we will have a worse depression after the war than we had in 1931."

Professor Bland, professor of public administration at Sydney University, said Australia would have to revise her ideas of high tariffs and isolationism. He suggested the following five social services to be financed by some form of contributory payments:—Community services—education, libraries, recreation. Unemployment and health insurance. Pensions—old age, widows, invalids. "Collective environmental services"—assistance for sewerage, drainage, water, slum clearance. Subsidised services—assistance for housing, purchase of furniture "and such amenities as milk, fruit and vegetables."

Professor Clunies Ross, dean of veterinary science, told the annual conference of agricultural bureaux that the only hope for primary industry after the war was a more prosperous world and a general raising of the standard of living. "To continue industrial protection while leaving farming to struggle on in a pre-war type of world of cut-throat competition and diminishing trade would be suicidal folly while tens of millions of people are undernourished," he declared.

Mr. Stanley F. Allen, a city chartered accountant, in a pamphlet urges that the Commonwealth Government should take control of the jssue of money "in all its forms." Debt-free money should be provided for defence and all national undertakings and services, he says He urges "machinery" to ensure a "just" price for primary producers, "reasonable profits, "an adequate ,, basic wage, and safeguards against price manipulation "and any form of exploitation." He also says that both employed and unemployed should be assured of a standard of living in keeping with the capacity of the country to provide the necessities of

"Whatever it is that we are fightgettinn it™M? "IV 1 " 16 tO see about getting it, Mr. Allen savs "Othpv wise, when the war is over vv : shall" find ourselves unprepared and the aim we set out to achieve will \l main exactly where we put it—far away in the future " ai