SOCIAL LEGISLATION

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 283, 27 August 1935, Page 8

SOCIAL LEGISLATION

The Prime Minister in his speech at Rangiora last night covered a great deal of ground with which the public is already familiar. In one field, however, that of social legislation, he indicated that the country may expect new enterprises. It has been known, of course, that the problem of housing has been occupying the attention of the Government, but “social insurance” and health insurance have seemed more remote. Social insurance may be assumed to mean unemployment insurance, and as a cognate question there is also the problem, which the Government intends to make “a special effort” to solve, of reabsorbing idle workers into regular employment. All this is good election fare, and no doubt the Government’s rivals will endeavour to go one better. It is satisfactory to have the Prime Minister’s assurance that the Government is not going" blindly into the question of housing. The data which one of' the Public Works Department’s engineers now in England has been asked to collect in regard to British housing schemes should be valuable as indicative of what may be usefully followed and what should be wisely avoided. Britain has done a great deal of pioneering work in this field and there must inevitably have been errors of judgment as well as successful results. _ Unemployment and health insurance are questions which experience of the depression and its after effects has shown to be worthy of serious attention. Here again the Government can profit by Britain’s experience of this class of legislation in operation. It began by being impracticably idealistic and ended by being severely practical. The essential principles are that schemes of this kind should be contributory to such an extent that neither the taxpayers nor industry should be unduly burdened, and that they should be adequately safeguarded against exploitation and abuse. That they will involve greatly increased expenditure and an appreciable extension of our innumerable bureaucratic institutions goes without saying. Whether the resources of less than a million and a half people will be equal to. this additional strain is arguable. There are many good things which the private citizen denies himself because of the state of his pocket. But political parties, especially on the eve of an election, do not look at it that way.