SOCIAL SECURITY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 86, 8 October 1938, Page 11

SOCIAL SECURITY

ACT DEFENDED

MR. SULLIVAN AT WAIROA

(By Telegraph—-Press Association.) WAIROA, This Day.

The statement that the propaganda being issued by the National Party in Hawke's Bay against the Social. Security Act was the most rubbishy assemblage he had yet come across in the welter of dishonest propaganda that had been issued in relation to tlie Act, was made by the Minister of Industries and Commerce (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan), in the course of an address in Wairoa today.

Mr. Sullivan added that the party's amateur statisticians had been free in computing the proportion of people who might qualify for any of the benefits and people were being asked to vote against the Government and this Social Security Act qn the grounds, for instance, "that you might die before coming to pension age and thus might hot be able to receive it; that although one child in every 212 will qualify for orphan benefits your child might not be one and so you should not make provision for it; that although one family in twelve qualifies for family allowance, namely £4 a week for every child in excess of two, that your family might not be the family to qualify; that as only one wife in 36 qualifies for •Widow's benefits your wife will be one of the lucky 35; that as only 155 persons in 1591 qualify by age for the old age pension you might die and not be able to receive it; that as only 62 persons in a thousand require free public hospital treatment you might be one of the lucky ones and never go to hospital; similarly you might never be sick and never be an invalid."

• Every one of these arguments used ,'by the Nationalists was an argument against every friendly society and every provision for life and accident insurance, Mr. Sullivan said.

Mr. Sullivan dealt with the benefits under the Act in detail and explained that ail classes would benefit when it Was put into operation.