Health and Superannuation Inquiry

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22388, 29 April 1938, Page 10

Health and Superannuation Inquiry

It was made evident again a day or two ago that the Prime Minister is impatient to have the hearing of evidence finished and to push the Select Committee on National Health and State Superannuation on to. the stage of considering and preparing its report. Mr Savage showed this impatience as early as the first day of the committee’s sitting. When a representative of the friendly societies said that they would probably want 10 days to prepare their evidence, Mr Savage retorted that if everyone wanted 10 days’ breathing space, the members of the committee “might as well go home.” He had forgotten that his proposals had been made public less than a week before, and in his forgetfulness he laid himself open to the sharp reply that, if the Government needed two years and a-half to sketch a plan of such importance, the people who must co-operate in

it and pay for it might reasonably ask fox* a week and a half to think about it and judge it. But the Prime Minister remains unreasonable. When the secretary of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union reminded him that he had promised ample opportunity for discussion, he answered that he had never, suggested “going “ on for ever ” and later, having in the meantime moved to terminate the hearing of evidence next week, announced that the committee must sit longer hours—“ all night, if necessary." Everybody will understand the Prime Minister’s difficulty. The next, and last, session of Parliament is coming'very near. The committee must report by a fixed date. The legislation to which he is pledged must be prepared. There is not yet even a draft bill. Evidence is still being taken. Official evidence, such as that of the Treasury, is still lacking. All this must make the Prime Minister look anxiously at the clock and fearfully at the calendar. But the fault is entirely his own and the Government’s. The first steps towards this legislation were left too late and were badly judged. It was the Prime Minister himself who, towards the end of last year, insisted that there should be no public investigation, no discussion, and then, early this year, changed his mind. The Government is to blame, not the public or the witnesses, because the schemes remained an official secret until this month; and the Government, not the public or the witnesses, is to blame because the actuary’s report was not ready even when the committee began to sit. Yet it is obvious that a great deal of important evidence could only be satisfactorily prepared and presented in the light of the actuary’s estimates, to say nothing of the Treasury figures that must be based on them. The Prime Minister has reason to be anxious about time. He has no excuse for’fuming against reasonable requests or for threatening such pressure on the committee’s procedure as may seriously diminish its value. It is better for the Government to be embarrassed than for the country to suffer under legislation botched as well as bad. ■