THE SOCIAL SECURITY FUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25111, 30 December 1942, Page 2

THE SOCIAL SECURITY FUND

A fortnight ago we directed attention to the discrepancy between the figures contained in the New Zealand Gazette, in the public accounts for the half-year, in relation to the Social Security Fund and the corresponding figures published in the official Monthly Abstract of Statistics. We pointed out that the payments that were recorded in the Abstract of Statistics for five months of the year actually exceeded those which were shown in the gazetted accounts to have been made in the period of six months. A later issue of the Abstract supplies figures of expenditure for the half-year. It disposes of any possible suggestion that the discrepancy to which we referred was less real than apparent. The particulars furnished in the Abstract indicate that the figures of the gazetted accounts—and the gazetted accounts, it is to be borne in mind, are the audited accounts—do not afford an absolutely faithful presentation of the finance of the fund. In some respects the difference between the figures exhibited in the Gazette and those published in the Abstract is very marked. For instance, the gazetted figures account for an expenditure of £2,379,864 in the half-year in respect of age benefits. According to the Abstract of Statistics, the amount expended was £3,739,028. Again, the Gazette shows that the payments for family benefits amounted to £188,486. The Abstract informs us that they were more than double this sum—that they were £398,063. Invalidity benefits for the six months are gazetted at £304,310; in the Abstract they are returned at £492,645. According to the Gazette, national superannuation consumed £238,529; the cost of it, on the figures in the Abstract, was £326,589. In the case of every benefit for which provision is made, a lower expenditure is shown in the Gazette than in the Abstract. The total expenditure charged against the fund in the gazetted figures was £5,498,386. It amounts to over two millions more than this sum in the figures in the Abstract of Statistics. It is seriously unfortunate that any discrep-

ancy of this description should be observable in returns of financial transactions recorded in Government publications. That it is definitely misleading will be generally recognised. It is to be explained, no doubt, by the system of audit of the country's accounts that is practised. Evidently, under it, a great many items of expenditure are not brought to account before the audit is concluded. Whether the system is the most desirable is a question that has been discussed on various occasions. One of the objections to it is that it is the cause of delays in the publication of the accounts. It will be seen, however, that, delayed though the publication of the accounts is, the taxpayers have no assurance that they furnish a complete record of the transactions within the period that covers them. A comparison of the figures in the audited accounts of the Social Security Fund with the figures in the Abstract of Statistics is becoming an intriguing exercise.