WAR PENSIONS

Hokitika Guardian, 18 May 1927, Page 4

WAR PENSIONS

VETERANS WANT INCREASE. WELLINGTON, May 16. The Minister in charge of the Pensions Department (the Hon Air Anderson) was emphatic in bis belief ns expressed to-day to a deputation front the South African War Veterans’ Association that the giving of a war pension as a matter of right is not sound in principle. The Minister promised to bring before Cabinet a request for an increase in the pension to South African War veterans.

The spokesman, Air J. J. Clark, reminded the Minister that some time ago a pension of £l3 a year, in addition to the old-age pension, had boon put on the Statute Book for South African War vote’rans; also that the Aliinistcr had intimated that he might ho prepared to increase the amount to £26 per annum subsequently. Air Clark gave credit to the Government for what it had done, and suggested that, as the payments in respect to Maori War veterans were decreasing very rapidly, and in view of the saving films effected, consideration might now bo gien to an increase for the South African veterans. He said he understood that pension payments to Maori Whir veterans were about U 64000 less last year than in the previous year and that the annual deceasor was at that rate. Many of the South African veterans were now reaching the old-age pension stage. r J he men who served in the late war had been treated more generously than the South African veterans, and he submitted that the men who served in the South African or in the Mnori Wars did their duty in the same way as the soldiers of the Great War.

Air Anderson said he would go into the matter in regard to the main request of the deputation. Ho remarked that lie had nothing more to say than on the previous occasion. “I certainly don’t think,” lie said, “that a mail who is in natural circumstances, and who by the laws of the land is eilahled to acquire a competency, should get a pension of right. The Maori Wnr veteran got a pension of right, but I don’t think it is the correct thing to do. I believe that if a man has under the laws of the country accumulated large property he has been recompensed by the country for w'hich lie fought. I believe that the country has seen him through all that it is entitled to see him through. With regard to the man who has fallen on evil, either by misfortune, by lack of talents, or by other circumstances, I do think that wc should assist him.”