A PECULIAR DECISION.

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19125, 9 December 1933, Page 4

A PECULIAR DECISION.

l A decision which was given in the Hamilton Magistrate’s Court yesterday in the hearing of a suit for arrears of maintenance, raises an important question of principle in connection with the administiration of relief work. The defendant, a farm-hand, was stated to be earning 15 shillings a week, and it was asserted by the maintenance officer that if he went to a married men’s employment camp he would be entitled to 35 shillings a week. Out of the latter sum, however, he would have to pay his own board.

In his evidence the defendant stated he had received an offer of 35 shillings a week in a camp but as he would have to pay £1 a week for board he preferred to stay on the farm. In deciding the case, the magistrate sentenced defendant to thyee months’ imprisonment with the suggested alternative of going into a camp and paying £1 a week maintenance. In so far as the decision assures the payment of a few extra shillings maintenance, it may have some reasonable justification, but the principle of the decision is inherently unsound.

In order to relieve the State of the responsibility for his children, the defendant has been forced upon the charity of the State himself. Assuming that he were making "at least some contribution towards his children while working on the farm, the liability of the State was confined to the two children to the extent of defendant’s shortage of payments. As a result of the decision t/;e defendant himself is to be provided by the State with the wherewithal to sup- - port himself and the children. The burden on the taxpayer, therefore, which was formerly a part liability for two children is now increased to full liability for two children and an adult.

It is difficult to follow the logic of such a decision, or to understand in what way the defendant has been made more deeply conscious of his obligations. Another point, even more incomprehensible, is that a man is compelled under the threat of a legal sanction, to abandon private employment, in order to throw himself upon the unemployed register and upon the generosity of his fellow taxpayers. Surely the public, as contributors to the Unemployment Fund, are entitled to be protected -from the consequences of such a decision.