The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1930 PENSIONS FOR EVERYBODY

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 961, 2 May 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1930 PENSIONS FOR EVERYBODY

1 SILLY attempt was made by the Minister of Labour last ■** evening- at Kohimarama to tickle the ears of Parnell electors and win votes for the United Party from simple persons who take politicians on words-value. In crudely outlining the Government’s prospective legislation, the Hon. W. A. Veiteh discussed the possibility of bringing in. pensions for everybody. It would be an act of mercy to infer that this feckless administrator was talking idealism with tongue in his cheek, but if he really meant what he said the quicker the country pensions him off the better it would be for the taxpayers. Pensions for all was merely the first flight of the Minister's inflated imagination. When he got soaring into the rosy zone of the United Government’s legislative humanitarianism he saw a new heaven and a new earth of his party’s creation. Give the party time and no end of aid from its Labour allies and there will be no more unemployment, no financial depression, no annual loss on the railways, no excessive burden of debt charges, and no worry for anybody either in the carefree days of youth and early manhood, or in the careworn twilight of old age! All this joy and perfect comfort is to be brought about presumably by the promotion of land settlement at an initial cost of any sum between £3,000 and £4,000 for each small farm.

It is not easy to be polite to any responsible Minister of the Crown who talks such political nonsense and seeks the favour of electors by a glib exercise of politically false pretences. But let the hard shell of common sense burst the balloon of this administrative aeronaut. There is less anxiety in New Zealand today about the remote prospect of pensions for everybody than there is real worry over the amount of pension now paid to those who deserve to be pensioned on an adequate scale. Such is the problem calling for the attention of statesmen and, failing them, competent Ministers of whom at the moment there is a lamentable dearth.

For example, there are 26,110 old folks drawing the old-age pension. The aggregate payment to them seems on paper to be generous—£l,o9l,262. But the average pension is only £4l 16s a year. Would it not be more practical politics to provide greater comfort for old-age pensioners instead of blethering (there is no better word for the occasion) about bringing in pensions for everybody? Will Mr. Veitqh. whose honorarium represents an exceptionally generous political pension, dare suggest that fifteen shillings a week is an adequate pension for old people in these days of exploitation and high cost of living? Then there are 20,686 returned soldiers in receipt of pensions as some compensation for the service they gave and the sacrifice they made. Their average pension is the magnificent sum of £56 a year. But retired civil servants, now totalling 2,796, receive in their bowling days an allowance of £l3B each a year. Of course, they, and the 17.177 other public servants who are assured of comfort in their old age, have contributed and contribute a relatively small proportion of their salary to the State Superannuation Fund, but they do not give enough to make the fund actuarially sound without handsome donations from the national treasury. The present annual subsidy is £86,000, but the value of future subsidies to be provided for by the State in addition amounts to £4,748,659. Since 1914 the annual value of superannuation allowances has increased from £70,000 in even figures to £359,000. Altogether the State spends nearly two and three-quarter million pounds a year on pensions, excluding its contribution to the civil servants’ pension fund. The highest average {tension is that paid to widows—£74 11s a year. Pensioned miners average £63 13s, Maori War veterans £49. blind pensioners £4B, and South African War veterans £43 10s. These official statistics should be sufficient to convince Mr. Veiteh as to the need of devoting such wisdom as he possesses to the necessity first of increasing existing pensions, instead of prating about providing pensions for everybody, including hopelessly incompetent politicians. As for the Minister’s dream of seeing unemployment vanish under the spell of his administration, let him have a heart-to-heart talk with his inspired colleague, the Hon. A. .T, Stallworthy, as to the best and quickest manner of employing Auckland’s army of unemployed.

PRISON FOR MOTORISTS

WHETHER motorists convicted of manslaughter should he imprisoned with “ordinary criminals” is a question that is exercising that well-meaning organisation, the Howard Penal Reform League. Mr. F. A. de la. Mare, who has introduced the question to the league, contends that a convicted motorist is in a different category from the usual run of evildoers, and that to place such a man among the prison population is entirely wrong. Apparently Mr. de la Mare would favour a kind of “halfway house” specially designed for convicted motorists. In such an institution, the motorist would rub shoulders only with his own kind, and the man whose blind carelessness, intoxication or passion for speed had caused him. to take another’s life would he in no danger of contamination hv forgers, embezzlers, shoplifters or mere burglars. Since Mr. de la Mare draws such fine distinctions between one class of prison inmate and another, it might he pertinent to consider exactly what makes a criminal, and whether the man who has a weakness for passing valueless cheques is a more dangerous member of society than the motor driver who habitually takes too much to drink, and who finally oversteps the mark, drives madly along the road, and kills someone. Members of the Howard Penal Reform League may decide that one of these men is worse than the other, but the general community will have no difficulty in saying which that man is. Motorists who, through incapacity, temperamental weaknesses or a passion for hard liquor, endanger the lives of others on the highway have no right to be there, and the clauses in the penal code providing imprisonment for those who kill people through carelessness were not put there for nothing. As the position stands at present, motorists are not very often sent to prison for the very reason that both judges and juries make allowance for the slightest mitigating circumstance that exists. Every prosecuting official knows that it is exceptionally difficult to obtain a conviction against a motorist from a jury. If it were not so difficult, many a man who is now enjoying hifi liberty would be in prison with “ordinary criminals.” The allowance habitually made on behalf of motorists was illustrated in a recent case in Wanganui, when a young man of good family, whose reckless driving had caused two deaths, was sent to prison for six months. The verdict against him was manslaughter, but if manslaughter with similar dreadful results had been performed under any other circumstances, six years, rather than six months, would have been his term. Reasonable allowance is shown already, and there is no need for foolish sentiment.