Labour Bill Seeks Increased Benefits

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32385, 26 August 1970, Page 26

Labour Bill Seeks Increased Benefits

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 25. The Labour Party’s Social Security Amendment Bill, which calls for substantial increases in social security benefits, was labelled “a political gimmick” by a Government M.P. in Parliament today.

The bill is sponsored by Mr N. J. King (Lab., Birkenhead).

Although the bill was introduced as a private member’s measure, Mr V. S. Young (Nat, Egmont) said that it was just a political gimmick and had no doubt been agreed on by the Labour Party at its caucus last week.

Mr Young said that if the bill were a sample of the private business likely to be brought forward by Opposition members in the remainder of the session, the House had made the right decision last week when it decreed that Government business should take precedence in future.

The bill seeks an increase of $2.50 a week in age, widows’, invalids’, sickness, unemployed and related emergency benefits for single persons, and provides for an increase in these benefits of $4 a week for married couples. Mr Young said the Government believed money should be spent where the need was greatest, and for this reason it supported the supplementary assistance scheme which was part of the present social security programme. Mr J. A. Walding (Lab., Palmerston North) repeated an Opposition challenge to Government members to cross the floor and vote for the bill. Only three non-Labour voters were needed for the increases to be passed into law, he said. In failing to provide pensioners with an adequate standard of living, the Government was committing . a breach of contract with superannuitants, Mr Walding said.

But Mr E. S. F. Holland (Nat, Riccarton) said he would not vote for any measure until he had been told what it would cost “The Labour Party is never keen to tell us what its policies would cost the taxpayer,” Mr Holland said. The Minister of Social Security (Mr McKay) said the bill was confused and hasty because it made no mention of universal superannuitants, minors’ benefits or orphans’ benefits.

Nor had any mention been made of the needs of those on sickness, disability and unemployment benefits, Mr McKay said The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Kirk) said the Government was interested only in economic pressure groups—not in economic justice for all. He rebutted claims that Labour “spoke bravely in Opposition but performed pathetically in Government" by pointing to statistics of the percentage of national income paid to beneficiaries. This percentage had been at its highest in 1960, he said, and had declined under a National Government since then. Pensions had not kept pace

with wages, and wages had not kept pace with rising costs, Mr Kirk said.