THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1947. PARLIAMENTARY PENSIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26634, 3 December 1947, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1947. PARLIAMENTARY PENSIONS

Members of Parliament, having voted themselves pensions for life and dispersed to their electorates, will possibly have a little explaining to do. It is to be hoped that this is the case; and it is to be hoped that they can be a trifle more convincing ( in their justification of this bare-faced grab than was Mr Nordmeyer in his postsessional address at Port Chalmers. Mr Nordmeyer’s philosophy is presumably summed up in his statement as reported that “no member can save anything, and a democracy should see that a member was reasonably well paid, and that he should have no worries about what will happen to him if he is defeated.” But it is a poor philosophy and a feeble argument. Apply it to any person other than a member of Parliament, and it would read something like this: “No rat-catcher (or insurance agent, or fruit vendor, or typiste) can save anything, and a democracy should see that he' is reasonably well paid, and thaL he should have no worries about what will happen to him if he gets the sack.” The proposition, as the enunciation of a principle of democracy, immediately becomes hedged about by qualifications and limitations. If a rat-catcher loses his job, either because he fails tp catch enough rats or simply because he falls out of favour with a whimsical and inconstant employer, he is not given superannuation. He may, subject to a means , test and a very searching examination of his affairs, receive from social security, to which he has contributed for years, some temporary assistance while he is seeking another job. Or if, having worked all his life to the best of his ability, he reaches an age at which rat-catching is too strenuous, he decides to retire, then he may draw a security benefit, or pension, of an amount fixed by the State as being adequate to his needs.

In what way is the position of the rat-catcher (who is carrying out an essential service for the public good) different in kind from that of the member of Parliament —the vote-catcher —who either fails to catch enouglf votes or decides to retire? It is, surely, for Mr Nordmeyer to explain this fundamental difference if he is to justify the extremely favoured position in which the Government has chosen by the Superannuation Act, 1947, to place those who have served the public as parliamentary representatives. The people of New Zealand probably are not unappreciative of the devotion to their affairs that is given by many parliamentary representatives; they realise, presumably, that at least a proportion of these men and women have missed opportunity for their own financial advancement by choosing to serve in the House. The people would, it is to be assumed, .be ready to become contributors to a superannuation scheme for members — for all that these same members have decided upon a lesser pension as suitable for them when they can no longer work, and that these members do not pay taxes upon nearly a third of their incomes.

But the superannuation scheme that is devised should surely have some relationship to the bases of other schemes. As it stands, a man need spend only nine years in Parliament and at 50 retire for life with £250 a year; or if he has been in Parliament for 15 years he can retire with £4OO a year for life. His actual contributions would in. the first case be. £450, and in the second case £750, but he could draw thousands from the public purse, while engaging in other lucrative enterprises as well. This scheme has no actuarial basis, it has had no licence from ||the. public, which must pay fof it, and to the extent that it broadens the field from which parliamentary recruits may come, its effect will be to attract an unsuitable type' of recruit. It has been.forced upon the people of New Zealand by a Government which, grpwn' old in service' and apprehensive of its future, is looking for a way of assuring the welfare of its own members, in or out of Parliament. Mr Nordmeyer insults his electorate, and indeed denies the spirit of equality that is ostensibly a sacred principle of Socialism, when he trys to present it as other than a shabby vote for •privilege and self-interest.