PROPOSED PENSIONS

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 June 1923, Page 2

PROPOSED PENSIONS

ESTIMATES OF COST.

(Special to "Star.”) WELLINGTON, Juno 22. A statement that lie did not think the country would agree to qn increase in taxation to provide for increases in pensions, was made by the Minister in charge of Pensions (Hon. G. J. Andedson) when speaking in the House of Representatives to-day. At the present time, said the Minister, the total amount to be paid in pensions was £2,459,000. Last session they had been asked to increase the pensions of widows and others. The incerase suggested in widows’ pensions would cost £lOO,OOO. Mr Fraser: Is that all? The Minister said he had estimated it would cost £351,000 to provide pensions for sick and invalided persons as suggested; that was allowing 15/ per week for single adults and 35/ for married persons. There were no means of ascertaining how many cripples there were in the country at the present time, but he estimated that the pensions for these persons would cost somewhere between £lOO,OOO and £150,000. It had been asked that the sick and invalided should be treated as the soldiers of industry. If they were, the total cost in pensions would come to about £832,000. Pensions -

to the blind would cost £lO,OOO, and for deserted families £211,250; that was allowing 10/ per week for a woman and 7/6 for each child. If pensions were to be given as had been requested, it would mean an addition to the present pension list of £1,197,250, making the total pensions payable more than £4,000,000. If they were to increase pensions in that way it could only be done by taxation, and personally he did not think the country could stand it. The alternative was a contributory pension applied to the whole of the citizens. He did not think it wise at the present time to ask the country to provide another million for pensions, however much he would like to see it from the humanitarian point of view.