THE PENSION LAWS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5156, 25 July 1927, Page 3

THE PENSION LAWS.

LEGISLATION NEEDS AMENDING.

VIEWS OF MR. SAMUEL, M.P.

When discussing pensions in the House on July 8 the member for Ohinemuri, Mr A. M. Samuel, said : — “A certain case has come under my notice, and I think that the pensions law should be amended to meet this and similar cases. The pensions law is, to my mind, full of anomalies. There is no doubt that the Reform Government has, since it took office, done splendid work in the direction of humanitarian legislation and enlarging the penisons scheme; but there are one or two instances in which it has not gone quite far enough and there exists anomalies which should be overcome. The case I want to mention in particular is that of a woman with a sick husband. There is no legislation on the statute book of this Dominion providing for such a case. If a man.with a wife and children meetsi with an accident or is laid up otherwise through no fault of his own, and is not covered by insurance, it is a hardship that the wife and children should have to suffer. This is a matter that requires to be gone into carefully. “When we have the general invalidity and unemployment pension no special provision will be necessary to meet a case of the kind I have mentioned ; but I have some very poignant cases of recent date, and one which I will put before this House will, I think, draw attention to the necessity for legislation such as, I suggest. A woman whose husband was employed in a Government Department has seven children. The husband fell sick after having gone from one Government Department to ■■mother. He is in hospital, and is laid up with what is diagnosed, I understand, as paralysis, and which might be expected to keep him there for the next twelve or eighteen . months, or he may never come out at all. But in the meantime there is no pension by which that woman and heir children can bo assisted. If a man is mentally affected and they take him to a lunatic asylum, his wife is entitled to a pension fpr herself and her children. If a man dies a woman is entitled to thei widow’s pension and .a pension for her children. I am quite sure that cases of this kind will appeal to all members, and will certainly appeal to the humanitarian instincts of the honourable gentleman who is in control of this department. I am not mentioning this case with the idea of bringing it before the public \for th©, purpose of making political capital out of it, or making any capital out of it with my own constituents, but am mentioning it from the broad aspect iof charity, which, I think, should appeal to every one of us. I mean charity in its broadest and best application and not in the narrow sense of the word. I mean it as the fundamental principle underlying all religions, whether it be Buddhism. Mohammedanism, Confucionism, Judaism, or Christianity, and as elaborated in the 13th verse of the 13tli, chapI ter of the First Book of Corinthians. and I trust honourable members will look it up and apply it to our humanitarian legislation.”