From Labour’s Viewpoint.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 16, 9 April 1927, Page 11

From Labour’s Viewpoint.

The Family Allowances

Written for THE SUN,

By

H. E. Holland, M.P.

This is the third article of a weekly series contributed by the leader of the Opposition, political head of the New Zealand labour Party. It is as fair to Hr Holland as it is to THE SUN r„ state that his pithy opinions are entirely his oten and repre- | sen t only the policy of the | labour Party; also that, in their publication, the rtrjht of criticism is not surrendered. s\S the first of the present month O’ there came into operation the j Family Allowances Act, which was j rassed into law towards tho end ot j last session. As the Minister states the position, “the Act provides for contribution of its a week tor every child in excess ot two, up to the age of 15 years, but so that the average weekly income from all sources of the" family ot the applicant, including a ny allowance payable under the Act, | shall not exceed £4, plus 2s for each i child in excess of two.” With the ex- 1 caption of the amount payable for I iach child, and the position of widows’ j tensions, the Act as it stands is almost similar to that introduced by Mr. jj j. Savage in 1922, 1924, and again in .1925. MR. SAVAGE’S BILL Mr. Savage’s Bill, which embodied the Labour I arty’s proposal for motherhood endowment, made provision [or the ascertainment ot a basic income for a family consisting of father, mother and two children, .and for the payment to the mother of an endowment ot 10s a week for each child in excess of two. the endowment to be payable until the child reached 15 years of age. Women with widows’ pensions were to benefit; the endowment was to be continued in the case of permanently-incapacitated children after the ag» IL-iit ’’ad been reached; and, with safeguards, it was to apply in the case of illegitimate children. THE CASE FOR ENDOWMENT As the Labour Party sees it, the case for endowment is unanswerable. It rests on the fact that when wages are fixed, whether by the Arbitration Court or round-the-table conferences, no provision is made for the case of the larger families. It is assumed by the court that ils minimum wage is based on a family with two children. Where the children in a family exceed that number, and more particularly where the number of children is exceptionally large, both the father and mother as well as all the children are penalised because the family is large. Prior to the Public Service wage reductions, I knew of cases in my own electorate where public servants with large families were utterly unable to pay their .way on the Government wages they were receiving. After the “cuts" their position became infinitely worse. The Labour Party holds that society has a responsibility in the matter of the children, the responsibility of ensuring that no child shall be called upon to endure the punishments of privation by reason of the fact that it comes into the world as a member of a large family. When that responsibility remains unrecognised, we provide the incentives making for race suicide. When Mr. Savage first introduced his Bill in 1922, the main objection was that it would be impossible to find the money. An effective answer was as to the readiness with which enormously larger sums had been found for war purposes, and also the extent to which taxation remissions to the wealthy had been made. THE CHILD SUSTENANCE BILL Shortly prior to the introduction of Mr. Savage’s Bill, the Child Sustenance Bill was introduced by Mr. G. Mitchell, then member for Wellington South. This measure proposed a hasic wage for a man and his wife, and a bonus of 6s per week for each child until 14 years of age. The Bill involved wage reductions for the single men to make the payment of the bonus possible; and accordingly it "as opposed by the Labour Party, whose members held that any motherhood endowment or child sustenance Payments should come out of the consolidated revenue. For an altogether different reason Mr. Hawken (now Minister of Agriculture) opposed the proposal. There seemed to him, he said, to be a tendency for everybody to want somebody else to support his children; the Bill proposed that others should provide for a man’s children rather than that he should provide tor them himself; a man ought to save up when he was young, against the time when he would have children to keep, and so on. The Labour Party , made a note of the fact that the Min-: ister of Agriculture was discreetly' silent when the Family Allowances Bill was before the House in 1926. Mr. | Hawken’s objection in 1922 was not I twite similar to that of Mr. Walpole, | of the Victoria Employers’ Federation, j some years earlier; but it had its relationship thereto. In answer to the | working-men’s demand for a living wage to enable them to maintain 1 'heir families adequately, Mr. Walpole; declared; "Marriage is a luxury; sol ate long beers aud theatres; and employers should not be compelled to \ Pay for these things tor their emit oyees.” Mr. R. A. Wright (now Minister of Education) took an opposite view to that of his present! colleague. ant j supported Mr. Mitfhells Bill, The Minister of Labour and Finance, Mr. Anderson, did not apeak in the debate; but it was genially known that he favoured placing Pensions and allowances on a contributory basis. GOVERNMENT’S CHANGED POLICY For several years the Government ®ained hostile, or, to put it more ‘idly, unresponsive, to the idea of otherhood endowment. In 1924 and Ir ’ Savage re introduced his a *■ on ly to have it ruled out as ail of .s OPr r iation ’ But - wi,h the support Dnn.o 7 abour Party, he succeeded in tho I?-' i ? inß the Proposal ; and when j leruJU 7®*® r ot Labour presented his P rt in 1925 it was found to con- 1

tain a reference to family allowances. After quoting Mr. A. B. Piddington, the Australian Basic Wage Commissioner, on the subject, the report went on to suggest that “one possible solution of the question in New Zealand would be achieved by providing that, without increasing the total wages now paid by any employer or in industry generally, the amounts ordinarily due to the workers would be adjusted, through a central fund, according to the number of dependents, if any, on each worker.” By deducting 7s 6d a week from each male worker’s wages the amount so deducted would in the aggregate provide approximately 7s 6d a week for each child, less an allowance for administration expenses. The idea was that each employer should be required to deduct the sum decided on from the wages of each employee, and to pay that amount to the central fund. WHAT THE ELECTORS UNDERSTOOD The Labour Party quite naturally accepted the statement contained in the Minister of Labour’s report as an indication of the Government policy We concluded that a family allowance of 7s 6d a child per week was foreshadowed, and that in order to finance the scheme the wages of single men would be reduced by 7s 6d a week. The member for Auckland East, Mr. Lee, was the first to direct public attention to the proposal in the Labour report; and the alacrity with which other Ministers proceeded to make it clear that the Minister of Labour’s report wasn’t really his report was certainly a source of intense merriment to all of us. Denials were shouted at us from the hustings and black-headlined in full-page advertisements in a multitude of daily papers. They just volleyed and thundered The Gover ment had never even discussed the matter, was one statement; yet another pronouncement left the public to infer that the question had been considered, that there was no proposal to reduce wages, and that the money for the allowances would come out of the consolidated funds. In none of the speeches and likewise in none of the full-page advertisements was there a word to indicate that the amount of the allowance would be other than the 7s 6d mentioned in the Labour report; and the electors went to the polling-booths with the idea firmly in their minds that the only difference between the family allowances proposals of the two parties was that of half-a-crown, the difference between the 10s provided in Mr. Savage’s Bill and the 7s 6d suggested in Mr. Anderson’s report. THE FAMILY ALLOWANCES BILL The elections over, and the Government’s substantial majority (in the House, not in the country) assured, the Family Allowances Bill was brought down —late in the session. I am inclined to think that even the Government’s most ardent supporters must have felt astounded when they first learned that the amount of the weekly allowance was to be only 2s a child, and that this mite was not to be available to families whose weekly income from all sources exceeded £4 plus the 2s a child in excess of two, and furthermore that it was not to be available to families where the father was dead and the mother in receipt of a widow’s pension. PURCHASING POWER OF MONEY IN 1927 In 1925-26 there were 5.664 orphaned children in respect of whom widows’ pensions were being paid, and the average pension paid to the mothers amounted to £7B 11s a year, or 30s a week. Now, 30s in 1927, according to the Government Statistician, had a purchasing power of 18s 6d as compared with 1914. The £4 maximum is equal in purchasing power to £2 9s 4d in 1914, and 2s in 1927 is equal to a fraction less than Is 3d in 1914; so that, if in a family there should be five children eligible for the allowance, the total family income, including the allowance, would be £4 10s, equal to £2 15s 6d in 1914. No family of nine could possibly live on that income. Most people are of the opinion that the wage fixed by the court leaves the parents of two children without the means to “maintain a reasonable standard of life as this is understood in their time and country” (if I may be permitted to quote the exact language of the principle to which New Zealand stands pledged by the late Prime Minister’s signature to the Peace Treaty). In any case, the Government freely admits that the basic wage fixed by the court is only intended to provide for a family of father, mother and two children; that, if there are ten children of school age. they must be maintained out. of a wage meant to maintain two, with the allowance added. The Government also admits that 2s a week will not support a child: they say they have no intention whatever of making full provision for the extra children. Which means, if it means anything, that a certain number of children in New Zealand are still to be left to endure the punishment of privation for having presumed to be born into large families instead of small ones. A CONTRAST IN ALLOWANCES Under the legislation of 1926, the State will provide 2s a week for the maintenance of each child in excess of two in New Zealand families whose incomes do not exceed £4 plus that allowance. But the same State will pay 15s a week to the person who takes charge of a boarded-out child. It will also pay 10s a week by way of pension, or allowance, to maintain the orphaned child of soldier, epidemic victim, or ordinary civilian. It will also (properly) pay 10s a week to maintain the child of the inmate of a mental hospital. Finally, it costs the Salvation Army about 12s 6d a week to feed each child in its institutions. These figures indicate how utterly inadequate is our 2s a child. The Labour Party insists that all children have equal claims on the

community: and it costs justs as much to maintain one child as another. It is a bad thing tor the whole community when children want while their breadwinner is working full time and receiving the basic wage. It is a good thing when every family is in receipt of an income which will fulfil the conditions outlined in the Labour clause of the Peace Treaty which I have quoted. The science of government consists lij so writing the laws as to maintain high economic standards ensuring a maximum degree of comfort and happiness for the whole of the people.