PENSION QUALIFICATIONS

Taranaki Daily News, 17 February 1933, Page 6

PENSION QUALIFICATIONS

ABSENCE FROM THE DOMINION. POSITION .OF EX-SOLDIERS. (By Wire-Parliamentary Reporter.) An anomaly stated to exist in the residential qualifications of the pensions law, which would seem to make a man of pension age because of his absence from the Dominion on war service ineligible for the old age pension, was cleared up by the Hon. J. G. Cobbe, Minister of Pensions. The position really is that under section 8 of the Pensions Act, 1926, an applicant for the old age pension is permitted to have two years’ absence from New Zealand in a period of 25 years preceding the date of his claim. Further absence is allowed in cases where the residence has exceeded 25 years at the rate of six months for every year of such excess, said the Minister. No New Zealand born applicant for the old age pension who was absent from New Zealand as a member of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, or for the purpose of serving in any other force during the war, can be disqualified by such absence . from receiving the pension, even if his absence were for the whole period of the war, unless the greater part of his life has been spent away from the Dominion. There is no case bn record in which an ex-member of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force has been refused the old age pension because of absence from New Zealand on war service. The only cases in which, as the law stands, applicants are adversely affected are those of people who first came to the Dominion not more than 25 years before the date of application for the old age pension and were absent from the Dominion during the war for? periods in excess of two years. In these cases the difficulty will disappear in less than 10 years’ time, but to meet the limited number of cases which will arise in this period amending legislation will be required. x