SUPERANNUATION.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13510, 2 July 1914, Page 3

SUPERANNUATION.

It is good to read Sir Joseph Ward's review of the great work he did for all departments of the public service by the establishment of tho principle of superannuation (says the "New Zealand Times"). Not long before his time the pension system was abolished on the ground of its extravagance. But no one thought it necessary to provide a substitute. There were "skinflints" in those days. In time the retiring allowance was invented, but always there came a bundle of hard cases to Parliament for commiseration. Then ensued superannuation, which was applied first to the railway service. Before that there was classification, with regular increments of pay and the appeal system, things which the people forgot when asked to adopt the nonpolitical scheme now in vogue, whose supporters wanted us to believe that nothing had ever been done for a discontented service sunk in chaos except to corrupt it. But superannuation was the supreme ' benefit for which the whole service has to be thankful to the Liberal leader. He began by recognising the principle that everyone in the service should be able to provide for the years of decline, and by realising the fact that very few ever do so, and largely because the rate of pay does not permit it, partly also because the individual is not so well able to secure satisfactory results as a State department. The obstacle was the condition everywhere accompanying schemes of superannuation, that the beneficiaries provide the whole fund, without outside help. Sir Joseph saw that this would dwarf any scheme, if not kill it with extravagant payments. He, therefore, boldly determined to add to the fund by an adequate. State contribution. In other words, he gave an increase" of salary all round, but instead of distributing the money he invested it for a special purpose—-the purpose of a superannuation fund. This system is now the rule of the whole srevice. Its main point is that it has.*combined., increase of pay with safety-of lucrative investment.