PENSIONS

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLVI, Issue 147, 9 September 1925, Page 3

PENSIONS

AN ADDITIONAL DOIAL (Per Press Association). WELLINGTON, Last night. Explaining the Pensions Amendment Bill in the House, the Hon. G. •J. Anderson said the bill provided for an additional 2s Gd per week for all old-age pensioners, that is, the pension will be raised from 15s to 17s fid per week. The age of children eligible to receive pensions was raised to 15 years. Maori war veterans were also given a small increase. Blind pensioners would receive an increase in common with all other pensioners, but there was no increase in the miners’ phthisis pension. That would have to remain until all invalidity pensions were put upon a proper contributory basis, nor was he reducing the age at which people would qualify to receive pensions. Mr W. E. Parry declared that the Minister had never given pensioners anything cheerfully. This increase of 2s fid was only electioneering. Pensions for both old age and the blind should be 25s weekly. Mr H. Poland asked why New Zealand could not pay £1 weekly when Australia was paying that sum to aged people. Australia also had been paying an invalidity pension for ten or twelve years. He commented that a sufferer from miners’ phthisis received the same amount whether he had five children or no children. The Hon. G. J. Anderson, in reply, denied that this was an electioneering measure. The question of votes or no votes had never weighed with him in what he had done for pensioners. There were phases of the pensions question which he thought should be submitted to the people, and if at the next election they supported his view legislation would be brought down.