COMPASSIONATE ALLOWANCES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18906, 5 July 1923, Page 6

COMPASSIONATE ALLOWANCES.

The Estimates attached to the Financial Statement include, by no means for the first time, a number of proposed monetary grants, of what may perhaps be termed a compassionate nature, to ex-members of Parliament and to widows of former members. We are inclined to think that a few words of comment on this subject,

which does not escape the critical notice of the community, will not be out of place. It is a matter of some delicacy, no doubt, and we should be loth to make any remarks likely to hurt tho feelings of interested individuals; but public principle has claims superior to those of personal sentiment, and the very fact that members of the Legislature, for obvious reasons, shrink from challenging or discussing this system (as it has come to be) of special grants or annuities accentuates the necessity of plain speaking' on the part of the independent newspaper press. It is quite right, by the way, that these grants, if proposed .at all, should find place among the general estimates, instead of being reserved for the supplementary list, which is usually rushed through the House —it might almost be said, in a once-famous phrase, “secretly, silently, and surreptitiously”—in the dying hours of the session. As regards the grants themselves, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, perhaps with rare exceptions, they cannot he justified on any solid grounds of reason or public policy. It is true that the amounts involved, in most instances, 'are small; but this fact does not affect the principle; indeed, it but serves to display tho, painfully sordid element in the business. Members of Parliament receive a fairly substantial honorarium for their. services—services which, except by cause of party restriction, are not incompatible with other regular or intermittent occupation—and the question is, Have they, or their relatives after their decease, any equitable right to claim additional remuneration for completed work P Taking all tho conditions into account, most thoughtful people, anxious to be just alike to taxpayer and parliamentarian, would probably answer this question in the negative. It might even be asked whether a politician who had fallen on hard days might not more reasonably appeal for financial help to his old political supporters, the electors who sent him to Parliament, than to the custodian of the public purse. It is right to say that no danger of partisan favouritism appears to be involved. Indeed, it is noticeable that all the names included in the latest list have been entirely dissociated from the party now in office. On this account Mr Massey may have felt the more inclined to stretch a point in the matter of generosity. But that, again, is an irrelevant consideration, and we are convinced that the preponderance of public opinion disapproves generally, without individual differentiation, the principle of ex-parliamentary doles.