PETITION FOR PENSIONS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21213, 11 July 1934, Page 14

PETITION FOR PENSIONS

RECIPROCITY WITH 15K1TAIN ASKED FOR More than 6000 signatures from all parts of the Dominion have been obtained for a petition organised on behalf of the British Immigrants Club and Empire Settlement League, Dunedin, asking that the old age and widows' pension scheme should be revised to bring it into line with the British Government's scheme. It is desired that every old person should receive the pension at the age of 65, resident in New Zealand, and that the widows' pension should be paid to widows with no children. The reason for the last requirement is that all widow emigrants leaving Great Britain since January, 1930, bring their pensions with them from the Old Country, and it is sought to extend this benefit to emigrants who arrived earlier. The British old age, widows', and orphans' pensions rest on a contributory basis under the National Health insurance Act, and it is suggested by Mrs Jones-Neilson that when the unemployment fund is no longer needed for its original purpose it should be remodelled as the nucleus of a similar contributory national pensions scheme for New Zealand. The widows' pension now given in this country is not, properly speaking, a widows' but a children's pension. Under the British act, if a widow remarries she forfeits her own pension, but that of children by the first marriage is continued.