CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 33, 8 August 1923, Page 3

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

WAR PENSIONS BILL.

Colonel T. W. M'Donald, who has held the position of president of the Palmerston North and Dunedin Returned Soldiers Associations, and was a member of the Dominion executive of that association, "and its representative on the Dominion executive of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, and an Independent candidate for Parliament at the last General Election, expressed to a 1 ost reporter his opinion of the War Pensions Amending Bill now before Parliament. Mr. M'Donald said: "To begin with, you know my readiness to criticise the Administration' when I consider it necessary.. I want you also to know my equal readiness to give credit where credit is due. I repeat what I have previously said, that in my opinion, no country in the world has done so well by its ex-soldiers as New Zealand lias. There were anomalies in the \\ar Pensions Act, and the amending Bill of the Government honestly seeks, in my opinion, to remove those anomalies, lhe five greatest hardships brought to light by the experience of the administration of the principal Act were:—(l) Necessity for a real appeal board; (2) no provision for economic consideration when awarding a pension; (3) inadequacy ot widowed mothers' pensions; (4). necessity for reclassification of disabilities:' (5) fixation of a method of deciding attributabilily of incapacity to'war service. "The first four of these are being adequately, provided for in the Bill. The fifth, I am convinced, is not capable of fixation without disregarding the safe-' guarding of the community as a whole. The report of the Commission is an able and sympathetic one, and in my opinion the Government is honestly giving effect to the spirit of that report, and deserve the unstinted thanks of every ex-soldier m the Dominion.

I entirely disagree with those who are alleging unsympathetic administration by the Pensions Board. .. I have never found that to be the case, although there necessarily must be many difficult problems to solve and some disappointments and dissatisfaction result. But the board has, in my opinion, always given the benefit of any reasonable doubt, to the ex-soldier. I have always contended that attributability of the varying disabilities of ex-soldiers, is incapable c" fixation, except on the merits of each individual case. I congratulate the Government ungrudgingly on th§ generous manner in which it, is meeting the difficulties of the ex-soldiers, and what is most unusual with any Government, the giving. effect to the spirit of its Commission's report. I believe that over 90 per cent, of the ex-soldiers will agree with me in thus giving credit where it is undoubtedly due."