“SOCIAL SECURITY”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 4 May 1938, Page 12

“SOCIAL SECURITY”

NOT SUPERANNUATION Mr Savage and Mr Nash will probably sigh with relief when they shut down on the hearing of evidence bearing on the social security scheme (says the “N.Z. Herald”). The queue of those providing their own superannuation has been an especially long one with a case difficult to answer. It is always difficult to justify injustice, although the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance made a good attempt at brazening it out with the representatives of the Public Service yesterday. Their initial mistake, as the Counties’ Association pointed out, has been to speak of what is simply an extension of the present pension system as if it were superannuation. Had Mr Savage said frankly that all he proposed was to increase pensions and taxation to pay for them, he would not have had all these aggrieved bodies on his hands. Instead he talked about a “universal scheme” and about “contributions’ instead of taxes, calling the result superannuation. So far from the scheme being universal, a means test severely limits its application. The provident are penalised. And so far from it being superannuation, the counties point out that it violates the cardinal principle of superannuation, that every contributor participates in the benefits. Usually, moreover, the benefits are in proportion to contributions. The means test destroys these implications. Benefits may or may not be covenanted or paid for; they may be uncovenanted, partaking of the nature of charity; they will not accrue as of right but only on proof of indigence. The gult dividing the pretence of superannuation from the reality of Mr Savage’s scheme proves so wide as to explain the difficulty many provident organisations and their members are experiencing in crossing it.