PENSION CUTS

Southland Times, Issue 22202, 20 December 1933, Page 7

PENSION CUTS

CHANGE IN DATE

STRONG CRITICISM VOICED

GOVERNMENT’S ACTION

(From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) Wellington, December 19.

Strong criticism of the Government s action in inserting a clause in the Finance Bill (No. 2) validating the imposition of pensions reductions six weeks earlier than was provided by the legislation, was made by Mr P. Fraser in the House to-night. Mr Fraser said they had been told that a mistake had been made over the date, but the Bill had gone through the House in face of detailed opposition. Every clause had been examined and discussed and yet the Prime Minister asked the House to believe that the Minister in charge of the Bill had made a mistake. The Pensions Department had made a mistake, the law draftsman had made a mistake and even the legislative had been mistaken. Even if that were true, what sort of action was the Government stooping to in trying to validate its mistake? It did not come to Parliament that session and point out the mistake in spite of the fact that the illegality had been pointed out by the late Leader of the Opposition. The reason was that the Government had had a majority of only two votes on the pensions’ cuts and had not dared to face the risk of trying to validate a further reduction it said it had intended, but had not translated into the legislation. , "I am prepared to believe almost anything as to the incompetency of the Government, but does the Prime Minister ask us to believe that he and his colleagues are so incompetent that right from April 21 of last year until the present time the law was illegally operated and that at least for something like six weeks that an illegal operation was allowed to stand without being validated? If that was so. the Government should forfeit all claim to competency, even to manage the country’s affairs.” Mr Fraser said that the Government, instead of admitting the mistake and deciding to abide honourably by the consequences of that mistake and hand back to the widows, orphans, old age pensioners, miners and soldiers whose economic pensions were reduced and the blind what it had taken from them illegally, was asking the House to validate the illegality. Surely the honourable thing would have been to accept the responsibility of the mistake.

“What great and serious concern is shown by the Minister of Finance when it is a question by honouring an agreement with those who lend money to New Zealand,” said Mr Fraser. “When the Southland Power Board. and the Auckland Transport Board intimated their intention of paying their interest overseas in New Zealand currency instead of sterling the Government insisted and is insisting that the bargain be kept. When it is only widows, aged miners, blind soldiers and their dependents, when it has only these to consider, then the illegality is to be validated. What great concern, what tenderness of heart for the international money lender, but what entire disregard for the interests of our own people, and the poorest section at that.