The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1969. Public Service Pensions

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32078, 28 August 1969, Page 16

The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1969. Public Service Pensions

About 130,000 citizens have an immediate interest in the legislation to extend the Government Superannuation Fund. More than 100,000 are contributors to the fund —teachers, policemen, railway and Post Office employees, members of the armed services, and some 32,000 public servants in departments under the control of the State Services Commission. The rest—about 27,000—are beneficiaries, or surviving dependents, on retiring allowances. Although the arrangements for extending the scheme have been under study for many months by a committee of Government officials and representatives of the superannuitants’ and employees’ organisations, the employees’ organisations are not happy with the idea that contributors who elect to benefit from cost-of-living adjustments to their retiring allowances should make an extra payment to the fund. The bill before Parliament to amend the Superannuation Act proposes that this additional payment be 1 per cent of salary. Normal contributions range from 5 per cent of salary for employees under the age of 30 to 10 per cent for employees over 50. There is also a modified scheme for members preferring to make only 60 per cent of the normal contributions and receive only 60 per cent of the standard benefits. The additional payment will differ in its significance among employees of different ages and on different pay scales. Because the benefits are related to salaries, which tend to increase year by year, equal contributions by employees and the State cannot sustain the superannuation fund and meet its annual payments. The Government has been making regular subsidies of $2 million a year to meet, in part, the deficiency in the fund; in addition, the combined subsidies from the trading departments and the Consolidated Revenue Account exceed employees’ contributions—usually by $5 million to $7 million a year. It is, of course, no fault of the employees that the fund draws so heavily on subsidies, which are very much higher, in proportion to the employee contributions, than the employers’ subsidies in private superannuation funds. Nevertheless, the scheme is generous by any standards —a fact that the employee organisa-

tions do not seem very ready to acknowledge even to their own taxpaying members. It is highly questionable whether the service organisations should expect the taxpayer to shoulder the whole burden of adjustments in benefits to match increases in the cost of living. It is hardly likely that living costs —and incomes—will not continue to increase; provision for consequent pension increases is therefore sound. But it is hard to see why the organisations should expect their taxpaying employers to pay for increases in the pensions of State servants while the State’s employees make no contribution from their own increased salaries. Only if State servants expected to receive smaller increases in income than other taxpayers would they be able to sustain their argument. They should not be less capable than anyone else of providing for their retirement.

Colour Television For $1 Million?

It is gratifying to learn that the cost of converting New Zealand’s four television channels from black and white to colour will he only about $250,000 each. This is the estimate of the managing director of His Master’s Voice (N.Z.), Ltd (Mr A. J. Wyness), who may be presumed to speak with authority. Mr Wyness was not reported, however, on the cost of replacing black-and-white television sets with colour sets. A colour television set made in New Zealand “ will “probably cost from about $600”, according to the Minister of Broadcasting (Mr Adams-Schneider).

There are 620,000 sets in New Zealand; to replace them all with colour sets would cost viewers about $370 million. The $1 million cost of converting the transmission to colour is, by comparison, insignificant

It would be good business for the manufacturers and retailers of sets in this country to give the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation the equipment needed for colour transmission.

Good At Everything ? Mr Robert Bell, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is not the first patient who has had a heart valve replaced in Auckland. The Green Lane cardiac surgical unit has performed hundreds of similar operations in the last 10 years or so and has won a world reputation in this highly specialised field. Seldom, if ever, has the Auckland team achieved such prominence in the lay press as it has through Mr Bell’s operation. Medical men may deplore the prominence given to the surgeon who operated on Mr Bell; English surgeons may protest that Mr Bell could have had the same operation in an English hospital; but surgeons the world over would agree that the more spectacular heart transplant has received too much publicity and that the valve replacement operation deserves more recognition.

From the New Zealand layman’s point of view, Mr Bell’s message is not merely, or even mainly, medical. A building contractor, Mr Bell visited a building exhibition in Auckland. He hopes to sell in Britain a type of building tile made in New Zealand but not available in the United Kingdom. “I am all for New Zealand”, he concluded “You “ people don’t realise just how good you really are “at everything ”. Mr Bell may be a lucky businessman as well as a grateful patient; New Zealanders need not regard him as an authority on surgery, or even on building tiles. But his tribute should certainly be thrown into the metaphorical scales on which New Zealanders weigh their country. It is odd that New Zealanders, so often resentful of wellfounded criticism by visitors to this country, are unnecessarily modest about—or, perhaps, ignorant of?—many things about it which should cause them pride.