P.M. attacks social service problems

Press, 12 June 1986, Page 6

P.M. attacks social service problems

By

PETER O’HARA,

NZPA staff correspondent Prestonpans, Scotland

The Prime Minister, Mr Lange, has criticised a glaring range of problems in his Government’s social services, acknowledging it had made mistakes. Consensus was a word haunting the Government and it had moved painfully towards understanding the human costs of economic adjustment, Mr Lange said. Giving the John Mackintosh Memorial Lecture, which commemorates a Scots scholar and politician, he spoke on the “New Welfare State” and criticised present practices in his own country including: • “Stigmatising” of beneficiaries. • Disproportionate treatment of Maoris. • Varying health care for the poor.

• “Rationed” education which benefits the betteroff. • Subsidised doctors who charge patients without Government control. • A pension scheme which gave the appearance of the “Welfare State gone mad.” “There are levels of attainment in public health and education of which I think we are rightly proud. That there were and are problems in the provision of social services is equally obvious,” Mr Lange said. “At times when every vested interest in New Zealand has been at the Government’s throat, consensus is a word which has come back to haunt us.

“The reality, of course, is that a genuinely reforming Government faces a constant test of its political nerve.” Mr Lange said the picture in the social services

had been confused and the pension scheme, absorbing 60 per cent of the Social Welfare Department’s budget, was a revelation. The interests of consumers of the social services were too often confused with the interests of those who provided the services, he said. “We have, for instance, worked ourselves into the position where the Government subsidises the incomes of general practitioners by many thousands of dollars but is quite unable to set the terms on which those who receive the subsidy should charge the patients.” Mr-Lange was given a standing ovation by about 500 people after his address. He will leave London today to return to Auckland, where he is due to arrive tomorrow morning.