Stretching Security

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22436, 24 June 1938, Page 10

Stretching Security

The Prime Minister’s latest statement on the Government’s social security, or superannuation, or plain pensions scheme shows that it is being - stretched to warm a wider group of the community; and the group seems to be very curiously chosen. The original statement of th>_ plan fixed £4 a week as the income level at which a man and his wife would cease to be entitled to the new benefits. “ The extension of the “scheme,” Mr Savage has now announced, “ will give something to everyone in the public “service or elsewhere who retires on a super- " annuation up to » fraction more than £ 300. It is a pity that Mr Savage has so assiduously cultivated the habit of making statements that waver between one meaning and another, as this one does; for he goes on to say that, when the bill is drafted, it will “ provide something “for the great bulk of public servants and “ anybody else whose income does not exceed “ £ 300 on retirement.” The difference, _ of course, is between a provision extending the group of beneficiaries among public servants and other superannuitants, on the one hand, and a provision generally raising the income bar to '£3oo; The second sentence clearly opens the provision wide; the first seems as clearly to restrict it to the superannuitant class, public servants and others, excluding, therefore, all those who have provided for their own security (within the. new upper limit) by other means than superannuation benefits; for example, by saving and investment, by insurance policies, and so on. On the first assumption—that the provision is & general one, simply raising all round the original income limit—the obvious comment is that the Prime Minister speaks with alarming off-handedness about a proposal to pile another increase upon the tremendous cost of the scheme. “No details can be given “ at present this is in the vein of Mr Savage’s recent remark in the North Island, that he “hadn’t gone into the figures yet” It is an astonishing attitude, or would be astonishing if it wera adopted by any other man than the one who crowns this statement by diagnosing and curing the world’s troubles in two words: “That is really what is wrong with the world “ to-day-7-small incomes.” Mr Savage has learned nothing from the failure of his attempt

to force the Government’s own actuarial expert, Mr G. H. Maddex, to declare his confidence in the country’s ability to support the scheme. Second, on the other assumption, that it is in fact a limited extension of benefits that Mr Savage has announced—limited to public servants and others under scale superannuation schemes —then the obyious comment - is that there is no case whatever to be stated for this selection of a new group of beneficiaries. Nobody could bluff or blush his way through any attempt to show why superannuitants, as a group, should be picked out for more liberal treatment. The general extension of the scheme would be recklessness run mad. The extension of the scheme for the benefit of superannuitants alone would look like recklessness streaked with cunning. Anybody with the smallest degree of political sagacity must ask himself why the Government should cast in this particular direction. Mr Savage has left it uncertain, so far, which of two things he means. But one fact lies clear of all ambiguity: he has the public servants very much on his mind. In both of the significant sentences quoted, though they vary in meaning, the public servants are mentioned, and mentioned first. The Prime Minister can think himself wronged by no critic who decides that the Government’s latest gesture before the electorate is essentially a bid to the public service.