STATE SUPERANNUATION

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 103, 28 October 1932, Page 3

STATE SUPERANNUATION

CASE FOR ANNUITANTS

(To the Editor.) Sir,—As an annuitant of the State Superannuation Fund, I ask your indulgence to place before the public the issues connected therewith as they appear to me. My warrant for doing so is twofold—first, the unprecedented nature of the recommendations of the National Economy Commission, since adopted by the Coalition Government, and now embodied in legislation before Parliament; and, second, the complacent reception given to these unrighteous proposals by (apparently) all sections of the electorate of New' Zealand. Open approval has been expressed by many, and the silence of others seems to mean consent. I am aware that State annuitants have for years past been singled out for abuse and attack simply because of the financial provision made for their declining years, and which they have paid for in the full measure stipulated in their contract with the State. This attack, and, indeed,, the legislation now before Parliament, imply that State annuitants ai'e a specially favoured class who alone enjoy the privilege of a secured old age. But this is far from being the truth. The State Superannuation Fund (embodying the Public, Railway, and Teaching services) is only one of many similar funds. It has long been recognised by all classes of employers that provision for their employees in the years of their retirement is not only just and equitable, but is good business, and, consequently, we have in the Dominion to-day superannuation funds for the benefit, on retirement, of the employees of municipalities, harbour, hospital; and other boards, banking, insurance, and similar institutions, and most of the big commercial firms. These are all based, more or less, on the same conditions of service, scale of contributions, and subsidies, and retir- i ing benefits as those of the State schemes, J and there must be many annuitants of these local public and private funds drawing very substantial pensions. So far as I am aware, no attack has ever been made on these annuitants or their funds, and certainly no attempt has been made to break faith with them: and lightly so. Why? Because, fortunately for these annuitants, these outside employei-s, in honourable discharge of their obligations to their servants,. have regularly paid into their funds the moneys required to ensure the due fulfilment' of their contract. I believe the commercial firm of which the chairman of the National Economy Commission is principal-has'a superannuation fund for its employees, and we annuitants of the State are . entitled in the circumstances to ask if he could countenance the default of his firm in the payment of its annual subsidies and then the repudiation of its contract because of that default as unconcernedly as his Commission seems to have, accepted the exact analogy of the State Superannuation Fund? ! So it has been left to the State, regularly and deliberately over the years, to default in the payments it agreed to make as its part of the superannuation contract made with its servants aud to lull the latter into a. sense of false security with the assurance that the guarantee and good faith of the State were behind these tunds and safeguarding the rights of annuitants,, even though the moneys were (from the Governments' point of view) being much better- employed to satisfy the clamorous demands of the constituencies. And now the State, being alone in the position to do. so, proposes to use its sovereign power to break faith' With its servants and force them, in the most callous- and Unjust fashion, to cany the whole burden of its grievous default.- I speak only as a retired public servant, because, having ceased from active.service, we are helpless and are no longer able to consider alternatives that would have been open, to us-before retirement, could we have possibly anticipated that the good faith of our employer, the State, was of no value when the testing time came. The htate (that is, the people of New Zealand) through its (and their) Executive Governm * n?^ Wuntly says to its retired servants: Ihe need demands and necessity Knowsno law: your contract must be torn up. So said the German Government on a famous occasion, and we can remember the execration this disregard of decency and honour evoked :from the' pulpit, Press and platform of the Dominion. Why such strange silence in 1932? If these legislative proposals arc adopted, then one class alone of the annuitants ot_ many superannuation funds will be grievously penalised because it was thenmisfortune to be servants of the State. It has been customary heretofore for certain Departments of State to solicit business with the lure of "the guarantee of the State, but if these proposals, so far as theyvrelate to contracts now in force, are adopted that bait for- State business can no longer, with honesty, be used." Solomon truly said: '"That which is' done is that which shall be done." v My object in writing; istd ensure that the people of New Zealand cannot plead ignorance of the plain purport of these superannuation, proposals.—l am, etc., . . J. D.' GRAY,