The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1919. EPIDEMIC RELIEF

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10206, 17 February 1919, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1919. EPIDEMIC RELIEF

Several points with regard to epidemic relief wore satisfactorily cleared up by the Hon. G. W. Russell's reply to the large and representative Labour deputation which waited upon him on Friday last. In a letter to the papers, Mr M. J. Reardon, president of the Wellington Trades and Labour Council,' had stated that he felt that the Minister for Public Health had brokenfaith with the previous deputation; hut Mr Bussell challenged this'statement at tho outset, declared that so far as he was concerned the policy that ho laid down in December had been strictly adhered to, and showed that the . difficulties that had arisen and the complaints that, .had .been, made were duo to the fact that in one or two important respects the instructions issued by the Health Department had not been carried, out. ~A, case in point was the action of the Wellington Hospital and Charitable Aid Board in giving relief coupons,' instead of cash, to some of the applicants. The Minister expressed surprise at what -the board had done, ana stated that ho did not know under what circumstances the board made this differentiation. The intention of the Government, he said, had been that cash to the amount of tho relief was to be given in every case, leaving the person in question to see that the best use was made of it. He promise ed to take steps forthwith to communicate with the board, and ask that the system of coupons should be ab, andoned, and money paid to those. who were to receive assistance; and he undertook, if necessary, to communicate with other hospital boards to the samo effect.

Mr Russell clajmed, with justice, that every taint of charity, as far as possible, had been kept out of.the epidemic relief scheme. The care ot those orphaned by the epidemic, ho explained, had been allotted to the Minister for Education (the Hon. J. A. Hanan), because he was the responsible Minister under the Infant Life Protection Act, the only Act under which the children could bo adopted, and because he alone had the machinery necessary for placing the, children out with foster-mothers or in institutions and seeing to it that they were well cared for. Widows and widowers left with children wore, on the other hand, left to the caro or the hospital and ohantable aid boards, because those boards alone tiad the machinery required for dealing with such cases. It would not have done, he pointed out, to hand them over to the Pensions Department, because that department made all its inquiries through the police. The boards, he stated, had been instructed to administer the epidemic relief sympathetically and generously. The e boards themselves did not pay a penny of the relief money. Not one penny would fall upon the ratepayers of any part of the Dominion. All that the hospital boaTds were asked to do was to administer, the money, and the Government, he claimed, and justly claimed, had every right to ask them to do that, instead of setting up new and expensive machinery, because the Government practically subsidised the boards pound for pound. The Government, indeed, he showed, had gone a step further; and under clause 64 of the Hospital Act, ib was pointed out, the boards were entitled to sot up a special committee, to be called the Social "Welfaro Committee, and hand over the epidemic relief work to them, so aB to lift it entirely from the ordinary operations of the Charitable Aid Board. With regard to the complaints that inquiries had been made by the board as to tho financial position of relatives of the applicants, the Minister stated that under tho Destitute Persons Act, relatives were liable to a certain extent for people left dostituto; but no suggestion had been made by him to any board' that tho provisions of tho Destitute Persons Act wero to bo appliod to applicants for epidemic rolief. In regard io maternity cases, also, he pointed out that ejpideniK} maternity, edses

were admitted freo to the nearest St. Helens Homo, or, in the case of the baekblocks, the Government, whore necessary, paid the doctors' and nurses' lees.

The Minister showed very clearly tho great difficulties which the Government had to face in dealing with the question of epidemic relict. One of the boards in the South Island, ho stated, ' had gone right to the very heart of the matter when they protested against being asked to treat epidemic widows in a different way from; other •widows, and the Minister recognised that it did place the boards in some difficulty, because in epidemic cases they were giving 10s 6d relief for each child, and then other widows came along to whom they were not giving the same relief. Mr Russell reminded f-'ip deputation that in December last ho had told a similar deputation that he quite realised that the establishment of the basis of 10s 6d per child per week could not stop with epidemic children, and that when the matter came before Parliament something would have to be clone to extend it to all children. In regard to that question, and in regard, also, to the question of epidemic widows' and other widows' pensions, the Government, he claimed, had made a step forward; and people should be satisfied with that and not I fling it in their teeth that they I'nd not applied the principle to everybody. lit was for the people themselves to say when the next election came what they' wanted to do in the matter; and he pointed out that the Labour party had not a monopoly of all the sympathy in the country in connection with those left in distress. In this matter, he said, he had acted on the lines laid down by the'Right Hon. R. J. Seddon, who had told him that when any reform was to be won he should take as long a step as possible, and then put a peg in and make that the starting point for the next step. The country, he declared, had been committed to this reform. It had taken a greater step than ever before, and no Parliament could go back on what had been done. No exception was taken, nor could well be taken, to this statement of the position. With regard to any further stops in the direction of extending the increased widows' and children's pensions to all widows and children, the next move, manifestly, lies with the electors themselves. It is satisfactory to note that, in thanking the Minister for receiving the deputation, and for the nature of his reply, Mr Peter Frnser, M.P., admitted that there had been a slight misunderstanding on tho part of the first deputation, and that there had been misinterpretation of the Minister's instructions on the part of the Wellington Hospital Board; while Mr Reardon mode the "amende honorable" to the Minister, assuring him that he had not regarded it as a personal matter so far as the Minister was concerned, and statins that "they realised that things were not going right, but knew that the Minister intended them to go right."