SECOND FINANCE BILL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22713, 28 October 1935, Page 10

SECOND FINANCE BILL

WIDE VARIETY OF SUBJECTS UNEMPLOYMENT ACT AMENDED MINERS’ WIDOWS’ PENSIONS (From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, October 26. A wide variety of subjects is dealt with in the second Finance Bill of the session, which was introduced in the House of Representatives early this morning by Governor-General’s Message. The Bill is a lengthy measure of 38 clauses, but the majority are merely of a machinery or validating nature. The reductions in racing club taxation authorised by the Bill have already been referred to. When the Bill was introduced the Minister of Finance, Mr J. G. Coates, said lie was afraid it would not be altogether acceptable to those who insisted that amendments to the existing Acts should appear separately. Actually the Bill contained several clauses amending the Unemployment Act. One gives authority to the Unemployment Board to make grants or loans for the purpose of assisting unskilled or other workers to pursue courses of vocational training. Provision is made for instructors to be appointed and training centres established. Another clause makes more elastic the stipulation that relief works must be strictly developmental in character, while a third gives authority for the payment of sustenance rates to registered unemployed who may do occasional work for brief periods daily. All men employed on relief works are to be exempt from the payment of wages tax. The decision as to what constitutes relief work is to rest with the Unemployment Board. At present this exemption is extended only to men employed on relief works by a State Department or local authority. Various technical alterations are made in the law relating to the payment of stamp duty and the payment of money into certain State funds. A point raised in the House this session by Mr A. M. Samuel has also received attention. It concerns the position of miners’ widows who obtained pensions for only two years after the passing of the National Expenditure Adjustment Act, 1932. These women will now receive pensions for the duration of their widowhood. After the Bill had been introduced Mr Coates assured the Leader of the Opposition, Mr M. J. Savage, that there was no “nigger in the woodpile,” and the measure was rapidly put through all its stages and passed.