THE SUPERANNUATION FUNDS.

Southland Times, Issue 21659, 22 March 1932, Page 3

THE SUPERANNUATION FUNDS.

To the Editor. Sir, —The report of the meeting of the Southland Branch of the Farmers Union published in your issue of the 21st instant raises no fresh matter that I can discover, but serves to reveal the appalling ignorance of the subject under discussion possessed by those who took part in it. When even so well informed a man as Mr David Dickie is unaware that the Post and Telegraph Department and the Police Department are included for superannuation purposes in the Public Service Superannuation Fund, what hope is there for the noisy but ill-informed rank and file member of the Farmers' Union ever grasping the true facts about our funds? Mr Dickie should have been able to find these words on page 544 of that very 1932 Year Book which he quoted from :—• “The Public Service .Superannuation scheane, which includes all branches of the Public Service except the Railways Department and that part of the Edu cation Service which comes under the operations of the Teachers’ superannuation scheme. . .” He should not have had to state that the statistics publisher! were defective. Had he read as far as the second paragraph of my letter in your issue of the 11th instant, he would also have found this fact stated. It is quite true that the State would appear to have paid £409,426 to the various State superannuation funds during 1931, but it is also true that the necessity for this was due to the fact that (1) a mainly farmers’ Government charged the fund from the first with crushing burdens which it was never intended to bear (vide, my letter of the 11th instant) and (2) that this mainly farmers’ Government withheld the full subsidies which were thereby rendered necessary, so that even by 1928 the fund had lost £1,060,325 due to the pressure put on this mainly farmers’ Government by the rural interests of the Dominion. I take this opportunity of suggesting to the local Farmers’ Union that their attacks on the Civil Servants’ superannuation Funds are in very doubtful taste indeed, seeing that the farmers of New 'Zealand have for many years past through the Department of Agriculture and elsewhere received all sorts of absolutely free grants from the Consolidated Fund. I would refer readers to page 9 of the Evening Post for the Bth March, 1932. There they will find figures compiled apparently by the staff o{ that journal and published without comment. The information is significantly headed “Aid to Farmers Valued at £1,710,225.” Here are the figures:

It is to be noted that in spite of the bad times and low prices the farming interests have had their grants and subsidies increased between 1929 and 1931 by £1,011,186 or thereabouts. I do not stress the fact that this increase represents about 75 per cent of what our mainly farmers’ Government saved on the public servants’ salaries last year, for that may be no more than coincidence. It may also be no more than coincidence that in 1921-22 the Government remitted land and income tax to the farmers of the Dominion which came remarkably near to what that mainly fanners’ Government saved by cutting down public service salaries then. What I do particularly stress is that in view of the construction which the general public might quite legitimately put upon the facts presented in the two foregoing paragraphs, it is a very glassy house indeed from which the local Farmers’ Union is throwing its stones at a Public Service which. has no voice except at the ballotbox. Now that the Farmers’ Union has the facts which are presented in this letter and in that of the Uth instant, I trust that they will reflect on them, and will desist from further noisy attacks on the various superannuation funds. Let them be assured that public servants now in the service are not going to get something for nothing when their time comes to retire. They will have earned their pensions. If, however, the Government does not repay the Fund by very substantial subsidies indeed, there will shortly be nothing to pay out with, and Public Servants will not get the. pensions for which they have paid. If that comes to pass it will have been chiefly due to the existence of the Farmers Unions as a political force in the land. I put it to them, then, why not live and let live?—l am, etc., FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS.

Expended 1928-29. £ Estimated 1931-32. £ Fertilizers railage rebate 109,597 91,000 Lime railage rebate 38,344 43,000 Compensation for condemned stock 29,762 31,500 Massey Agricultural College 19,500 22,025 Rabbit, destructive subsidies 15,000 13,000 Blackberry bonus 10,000 10,000 Deer destruction bonus 1,684 5,000 Fruit export guarantee 352 11,000 Fork bonus 25,810 — Egg export guarantee —~ 850

Royal Agricultural 250 Society 1,000 Substitution of flat rate Land Tax for graduated 300,000 scale — Special subsidy to rural local bodies in relief of local rates — Ordinary subsidies on 250,000 rates 186,167 Subsidies on a/c purchase 200,000 of superphosphates — Railage concessions starv70,000 ing stock and fodder 959 Services of Dep. of Agric. in addition to items 2,000 included above 260,864 Unemployment Fund proportion of total subsidizing farm labour 310,000 (approx.) — 350,600 £699,039 £1,710,225