Australian Newsletter “Compulsive Trickery” To Avoid Means Test

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30448, 23 May 1964, Page 18

Australian Newsletter “Compulsive Trickery” To Avoid Means Test

[From FRANK PUDDICOMBE, N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent J

SYDNEY. May 21. Thousands of elderly persons in Australia are being forced into “compulsive trickery” to avoid the means test for age and widows’ pensions.

The political writer for the “Sydney Morning Herald” found that they are using lump sums of their life savings in trips abroad and buying expensive clothing and jewellery to make themselves eligible for a full pension. Others buy furniture and other goods and present them as gifts to their married sons and daughters. The practice is believed to be causing alarm in Federal Government circles. It has already led to a decision by the federal council of the Liberal Party to set up a committee to report on ways and means of abolishing the means test for social service pensions. The council met in Canberra last month and its decision on the means test was announced at a meeting of the party’s New South Wales council in. Sydney this week. The appointment of the committee is an important victory for the New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party, whose delegates sponsored the motion for the committee’s appointment The branch has been agitating for years for progressive abolition of the means test. The gross cost to the Government in abolishing the test would be about £130,000,000 a year, but members of the branch believe this could be reduced to a net cost of about £7O million.

At present men over 65 and women over 60 are eligible for a full pension while owning a home, a car, and having £2OOO in the bank. Shopping Dispute The Minister for Labour and Industry in New South Wales (Mr J. J. Maloney) believes that a referendum to allow shopkeepers to trade when they wished would be carried —but he is not in favour of a referendum. A State-wide dispute has been raging for months on trading hours, and the Labour Government is believed to have lost a large number of its supporters because of its enforcement of the law.

Mr Maloney was quoted in the grocery journal, “Retail Week,” as supposing a referendum on trading hours would be carried “because the general public is rather selfish.”

As the Sydney “Daily Telegraph” said this week, it is getting harder and harder to see whose interests Mr Maloney is supposed to be serving. He' said he was protecting the small shopkeepers —but most of them are opposed to his policy.

Now he admits that a referendum to change the shopping laws would be carried, but stands firm against a change.

Inspectors from the Department of Labour and Industry will have their hands full if female hairdressing salons also ignore the law regarding their hours.

Two establishments have now remained open on a Friday night in defiance of

the regulations. They have had their names taken by the inspectors. A woman reporter of the Sydney “Sun” was one of those who had a hair-do at the suburban establishment which remained open last Friday night She noted that men could visit the local hotel across the street and drink until 10 p.m. and yet a simple thing like a hair set was denied to women.