AN EXCELLENT ADDRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 107, 7 May 1936, Page 18

AN EXCELLENT ADDRESS

An instructive and comprehensive survey of the New Zealand pension system was given by Miss IrvineSmith, M.A., to the Business and Professional Women's Round Table Club at their monthly meeting held in the Y.W.C.A. lecture hall yesterday evening.

Before dealing specifically with the pensions of the Dominion, the speaker briefly outlined the historical development of the pension system from the private pension of the past, bestowed upon selected individuals as such, to what might be termed a present system of social insurance within the reach of all.

Private pensions in the past, said Miss Irvine-Smith, frequently took the form of grants made by monarchs to court favourites,' or, in another form, the attachment of salaries to, positions that were merely sinecures/ In England the Stuart downfall was largely due to such mishandling of public finances, and at a later date the abuse became still greater in France where it was one of the contributing factors to the French Revolution. As part of the general cleaning up of French Administration that followed, France established her pensions on a sounder and fairer basis and public pensions, granted to individuals as members of a specified class, came into being.

The broadening scope of public pensions during the last century has been due to the corresponding broadening of the world's social attitude. A pension is no longer regarded as a charity or gift, but rather as a deferred wage, in expectation of which the contributor works for a smaller salary and resists present offers of more profitable changes of employment! To the employer the advantage of a pension system is obvious, enabling him to eliminate, in, fair and orderly manner, the employee' no longer at the. height of his powers, as well as avoiding the dislocation of staff and loss of efficiency consequent upon frequent staff changes.

The broadest development of the pension system has been state provision against old-age dependency, inaugurated by Germany in 1889 and since adoptqd by most countries of the civilised world. This was largely the result of the widening of the franchise and the growth of the Labour movement, and it is no small praise to New Zealand that as early as 1898 she had established a scheme of non-contribu-tory old age pensions ten'years in advance of Britain's Old Age Pensions Act of 1908.

An examination was then made of the conditions governing local pensions and an interesting discussion followed Miss Batham, on behalf of the members, thanked Miss Irvine-Smith for her very informative address.