Govt accused of cutting super.

Press, 22 October 1983, Page 6

Govt accused of cutting super.

PA Wellington The Government was accused in Parliament yesterday of cutting superannuation payments to meet the increasing cost of unemployment benefits. Mr T. K. Burke (Lab., West Coast) said during debate on the Social Welfare Department estimates that if there was a growth industry in New Zealand it was “the Ministry of Unemployment Benefits.”

About $253 million a year was spent on unemployment benefits. Senior citizens and retired people had suffered considerably under cuts in Government spending, he said.

The Minister of Social Welfare, Mr Young, was “robbing Peter to pay Paul. “He is taking it from national superannuitants so that he can pay it out on the unemployment benefit becaus he cannot get the Government to provide the jobs it promised to deliver,” he said. In 1979 the accommodation benefit was cut to

cover accommodation needs only.

“The Budget said it meant savings of about $9 million a year. That may have been transferred from that account to make up for increasing unemployment” Television concession and the Christmas bonus had been removed. Travel concessions for superannuitants had been either removed or destroyed.

“The rates rebate has been cut so that no married superannuitant can receive the full amount of rebate because the level before abatement is now well below the National Superannuation rate.”

There had also been long delays in paying increases to which superannuitants were entitled, said Mr Burke. “A 5 per cent general wage order which wage and salary earners got in June, 1981, superainnuitants got in March, 1982.

“These are the kinds of cuts which have been made

She said the figure was a “national scandal” and “if it were perpetrated by any other sector of the population there would have been committees and commissions and the most sustained effort to claw the money back you have ever seen.” Ms Waring said that if she had not paid a traffic fine and went overseas she would be picked up on her return, but defaulting fathers were not even checked.

She suggested a committee of women be set up to study the matter. Ms Fran Wilde (Lab., Wellington Central) criticised two aspects of the benefits available to single parents. She said mothers on the domestic purposes benefit who could not prove the father’s identity received $l6 a week less than others. That was unfair and discriminatory, she said. Also, the maximum $25 that D.P.B. beneficiaries were allowed to earn before

the benefit was docked was too low, she said. Raising the level would encourage independence and selfesteem and the development of work skills and habits.

Mr R. M. Gray (Nat, Clutha) criticised the Opposition for saying pensioners were worse off.

“The elderly people are much better off today than they were under a Labour government and they (the Opposition) know perfectly well that that is the case,” he said:

Mr C. R. Marshall (Lab., Wanganui) asked Mr Young for his support in efforts to establish an award covering childcare workers when the freeze was lifted. Some childcare workers were being paid $2 and $4 an hour, he said. Some were being paid as little as $1.60 an hour.

Mr Young, referring to comments made by Ms Waring, said that as far as the domestic purposes benefit was concerned the level of contributions from noncustodial parents had been

increasing considerably. The department was increasing efforts to trace the non-payers. Mr N. J. Kirk (Independent, Sydenham) congratulated Mr Young for the excellent work his department had done in the last year.

Mr Kirk said he was satisfied Mr Young had done all he could to ensure that those New Zealanders in real need of a welfare benefit had received one.