OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 September 1941, Page 4

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

SOCIAL SECURITY ACT (To the Editor.) - Sir, —In your issue of the 23rd inst, Mrs Barrer cites 16 points on which, she tells us, she bases her opposition to the Social Security Act. She also refers to an article she had published in the “National .News” (official organ of the Nationalist Party) of August, 1939. which I quoted from in’ my address on Monday evening, and which article embodies the 16 points referred to.

In regard to the 16 points, I suggest to Mrs Barrer that if she studies the Social Security Act, she will find that with the exception of point (1) and with a modification of point (16). they are all embodied in the Act. What I objected to was Mrs Barrer telling meetings of women who were also unacquainted with the Act, that the principles contained in the 16 points were not embodied in it. In the article referred to, for instance, she represents as a fact that people can be debarred from the free hospital treatment prescribed in the Act, on account of their “income being too high.” This kind of misrepresentation is harmful and I submit, should not be possible to anyone professing to have even an elementary knowledge of the Act. — Yours, etc., J. ROBERTSON. Masterton, September 25.