SOCIAL SECURITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 June 1938, Page 6

SOCIAL SECURITY

PROVISION FOR WIDOWS AND OTHERS FINANCE MINISTER REPLIES TO CRITIC (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Statements concerning the Government’s social security proposals made by Dr McKinnon, at Dunedin, were referred to yesterday by the Minister of Finance, the Hon W. Nash. Dr McKinnon, he said, criticised an imagined proposal that benefits should be paid to childless widows' from the age of 45 years. Wherever she got that impression it was certainly not from a study of the Government’s proposals. “The actual position is that the Government proposed that provision should be made for widows left with young children and for widows who have now no children but have lost their opportunity of regaining positions in industry through devoting many years to the bringing up of a family,” said Mr Nash. “The other provision for widows is for a benefit payable from the age of 50 in those cases where, the marriage has continued .for a lengthy period thereby disqualifying the widow from the chance of getting competitive employment. “The spinsters were not forgotten, as suggested by Dr McKinnon. None of them would ask for a benefit if they did not need it, but there is ample provision for those who do require it by way of disability benefit. “It is customary among a type of critic,” said Mr Nash, “to adopt Dr McKinnon’s complaint that those who qualify for the old age pension do so as a result of ‘racing, gambling and drink.’ ” He resented such a gross insult to the men and women, comprising nearly half those of pensionable age, who, by their services to the nation in their working years, on meagre incomes, have earned the right to the retiring allowance which it was proposed to make available to them after the passing of the social security proposals.