PENSIONS AND THRIFT

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8366, 28 February 1913, Page 6

PENSIONS AND THRIFT

Hitherto it has been generally considered constitutional and correct for statements of policy to come from the Prime Minister. Some recent occurrences, however, indicate that tho Hon. W. F. Massey is Milling to allow announcements of the kind to issue through other channels, and it is now evident that it is the Minister of Customs to whom we must look for information as to the intentions of the Cabinet on matters of public. policy. Thus tho Hon. F. M. B. Fisher stated in Auckland a couple of days ago that tho existing old ago pensions law will not allow a pension to be given to a man who has been thrifty, but rewards the man who has been thriftless, and possibly indolent. “These matters,” he said, “are not going to be altered in a week or a month, because the whole financial basis will have to bo altered.” So! The, whole financial basis of the pensions scheme “will have to be altered,” will it? Does this mean that when Reform has got sufficiently into its stride an applicant for an old-age pension will have to prove to tho satisfaction of a magistrate that he has been “thrifty,” and that care will be taken to see that the State “rewards” none who fail to meet this new test? And if so, how “thrifty” is it suggested a man or woman ought to have been in order to qualify ? "What is the “Reform” standard—what degree of “thrift” will be required to stand between the applicant and starvation in his or her declining years? .Perhaps the intended “alteration of the whole financial basis” means the abolition of free pensions in favour of a system of national insurance such ns self-styled Reformers have at times advocated. The old-age pension has in the past been regarded as a fitting return, by the State to residents of long standing who have not fared too well in the rather grim and fluctuating battle of life. Even some of the hidebound Tories now masquerading as Reformers had apparently come to accept that view, and even urged extension of the present system. But tho Hon. F. M. B. Fisher has shown that other plots are being hatched. Ah, well! Perhaps wo need not be surprised. In any case, we have the repeated assurance of the Minister of Customs that “consistency is the refuge of fools.”