BENEFITS HELD TO BE SECTIONAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 87, 13 April 1938, Page 4

BENEFITS HELD TO BE SECTIONAL

SOCIAL SECURITY PROPOSAL CRITICISED. TAX ON EARNINGS OF ALL. Reference to the Government's proposals for the establishment of a national superannuation and health service scheme was made by Mr. O. C. Mazengarb, when speaking at a National Party garden party at Lower Hutt on Saturday. “We have no doubt that the Government is actuated by a sincere desire to bring a better life to those people who voted it into power,” he said, “but that desire is being frustrated by a confusion of ideas, by a false sentimentality and by bad economics.

“Despite the Prime Minister’s repeated assurances that the scheme would be in operation last year, it is still very nebulous,” Mr. Mazengarb continued. “Sufficient has already been revealed to show that it savours somewhat of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The annuity benefits are sectional and not national; they make an instantaneous appeal to all those people who look for something for nothing.

“If any other political party had proposed to tax all civil servants, superannuitants and all contributors to the various provident funds by 2s in the £ for a scheme like this, the Socialists would have exhausted their ample vocabulary of epithets in support of the principle of ‘no taxation without participation.’ “I can promise you this that when the National Party is given power you will find it composed of men who will produce a scheme based on the principles set out in a report presented to Parliament in 1935, just before last election. That scheme of health insurqjice and superannuation will not need to bear the American title of ‘Social Security.’ “It will be just, equitable and humane. It will not begin by destroying existing schemes or rendering them nugatory. It will provide for all those people who need assistance, and, in addition, by generous contributions from the State, it will encourage all wage-earners to make a provision for the evening of their lives that will be far more acceptable, and far more satisfying than the mere bread-line existence that they can look forward to under this so-called ‘Social Security* scheme.”