Parliament debates National super. bill

Press, 17 September 1976, Page 4

Parliament debates National super. bill

PA Wellington The cost of the National Government’s superannuation this financial year would be $l7 million, the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) said in Parliament yesterday.

Speaking during the introduction of the Social Security Amendment Bill, Mr Muldoon said the scheme was the most significant advance in social welfare in this country in several years — "at least since World War 11.”

“What this bill means in layman’s terms is that it moves a slice of the national income into the hands of the older people among our population.”

National was not introducing the measure hurriedly. “We are doing it after explaining it to the people at great length.”

He said the bill was in accord with the National Party’s election policy and invited the Opposition to challenge this. One departure from the policy, he said, was that by introducing the first stage in February, beneficiaries would be better off in terms of related costs and wages.

The bill removed the means test at the age of 60, something people had been wanting for several years. The benefits of the bill could not be measured simply in income alone. Other benefits were that it encouraged people to work without diminishing their benefit. It also encouraged people to save for their future and did not penalise them for doing so.

“It means beneficiaries won’t have to fill in those forms (incomes statements) in which they have to bare their souls to the department,” Mr Muldoon said.

Replying to Opposition claims that benefits would be going to those who did not need them in terms of their present income, Mr Muldoon said: “Of course business and professional men will get their superannuation— just as they do the universal superannuation. “But they will pay more for it, not only during their working lives but also when they are receiving it.” After all, he said, that was the principle of social security.

Mr Muldoon was critical of Labour’s scheme, which he said showed no interest in the invalid, solo parent, or housewife- It was a discriminatory scheme because of this, and it would be 50 years

before it would have been fully implemented, he said. The superannuation question was a major election issue and he challenged the Opposition to say whether it would promise in its '.978 election manifesto to abolish the National measure.

“The net cost of. this proposal in the financial year will be $l7 million,” Mr Muldoon said.

The opposition spokesman on Social Welfare ‘Mr M. A. Connelly) said that in order to finance the scheme the Government would have to tax the young family man. apprentices, teenagers, and the wage and salary earner generally. The Government would also have to cut back or defer vital social expenditure on the handicapped and on old people.

Mr Connelly said the bill confirmed what the Prime Minister, the Minister of Social Welfare (Mr Walker) and the Government in general had already implied — that the Government had broken a major election promise.

The bill revealed that tens of thousands of beneficiaries would he no better off under National superannua-

tion than they were under the Labour Party’s scheme, he said. Additional benefits and concessions would also be phased out. The National Party in its pre-election campaign had left the impression that under the scheme married couples would be $21.46 a week better off “when they won’t.”

Mr Connelly said the scheme was socially unjust and almost all the increases in benefits would go to those in least need. “The bill is in fact unfair and discriminates between those over 60 years of age,” he said. The Labour Party’s superannuation scheme had provided a good wage-related retirement pension which was inflatioh-proof, “which this isn’t,” and with the disposal of the scheme the country had lost an important investment tool to provide loan finance for local authorities and other bodies. About $370 million in revenue had been estimated to be required to finance the National scheme, which would depend on tax revenues.