'Half-way house’ on benefits

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32873, 23 March 1972, Page 3

' Half-way house’ on benefits

(N.I. frest Aitociation) WELLINGTON, March 22. The report of the Royal Commission on Social Security offered in its recommendations some innovations which could lead to useful improvements in social security, but it stopped short of really radical reforms, the Leader of I the . Opposition (Mr Kirk) said today. “It seems instead that the : commission has attempted to ioffer recommendations that ■are a half-way house to; ' wage-related retiring allowances,” he said. “There has been an attempt to link the recommendations as to the rate of benefits in some cases to the principles involved in the Woodhouse report on perisonal compensation. “For this reason the special committee of Parliament considering legislation based lon the Woodhouse report [ should also consider the prinI ciple of wage-related com-j rpBiisNIUH insofar as it; reaches into social security.’" ; Mr Kirk described this re-; [port as a valuable document 'that deserved careful study. I “At this stage it is not possible for me to make a de- ' tailed analysis of the whole 'report because a copy was .only made available to me some weeks after it was available to the Government, and indeed some days after lit was made available to Isomj news media elements,” he said.

J “However, the timing of I the report is fortuitously ; [appropriate. ii ‘Tomorrow, March 23, is 'the one hundredth anniverisary of the birth of Michael Joseph Savage, and the report serves as a reminder . how well the social security [ system Mr Savage and his • colleagues developed served . New Zealand and how well

it could continue to serve New Zealand if it is modernised and extended to meet present problems.” Mr Kirk said the commission’s report offered one avenue of consideration to restore effectively social justice

iifor many sections of the ■community. t “I hope there ii immediate action, and that this report •; doesn’t suffer the intermins able inquests that have - attended the Woodhouse re- : port—inquests that have

been so numerous and so drawn out that it will be at least eight years from the setting up of the Woodhouse commission to the first implementation of any of the commission's findings. “Speedier action than that —indeed immediate action—is called for on many of the proposals of the social security commission, particularly those which call for an adjustment of social security benefits to a proper relative level.

“The commission is to be congratulated on the care and thought which it has put into.its report, and I trust that examination of the report will reveal a springboard from which social security can leap forward,” Mr Kirk said.