ECONOMIC PENSIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21132, 15 March 1932, Page 12

ECONOMIC PENSIONS.

Sir, —Tho recommendations of the National Expenditure Commission relative to disabled ex-soldiers' economic pensions appear to me to be outrageously drastic. As a pensioner, I am of the opinion that tho economic pension should be tho only one. Regarding disability in itself, I suffered such, in tho form of total deafness in ono ear right from tho concluding months of the war, but I certainly did riot apply for any pension at all until, several years later, tho other ear becamo deaf, and additional physical defects due, to war service appeared and prevented me fiom following my occupation. I daresay there are hundreds, and perhaps thousands of others, who did not consider disability alono as a ground for a pension, apart from economic necessity, due, of course, to war disability. I am strongly of tho opinion, however, that the State is morally bound to seo that its incapacitated defenders and their dependants do not suffer privation, yet the commission's recommendations, if put into effect, will reduce us below tho level of able-bodied relief workers. The scandalous waste of public money disclosed by the Herald's special articles, in rospect of unnecessary and overstaffed departments, in unwanted railways, until recently, and in lavish travelling allowances for M.P.'s and their relatives, makes it clear that there has been no equality of sacrifice. Tho New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Association made no objection to the last reduction in economic pensions, but in view of the hardship the presont recommendations would result in, to say nothing of the gross injustice of them, I do not think opposition could bo taken as showing lack of appreciation of tho economic difficulties of tho Dominion. Tho recommendation that the economic pension should be halvod this year and abolished next implies that incapacitated ex-soldiers could got employment and earn tho equivalent of tho economic pension. The almost total failure of tho rehabilitation committees to place ex-soldiers in work should be sufficient proof of tho fact 'hat it is not possible to rehabilitate them. Despite the lapse of time since the cessation of hostilities, L can scarcely imagine that the people of New Zealand will permit tho carrying into effect of recommendations that are so palpably unjust. This would be "the most unkindost cut of all." Matamata. T. E. McMlllam.