Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1943. SOCIAL SECURITY AND WELFARE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 June 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1943. SOCIAL SECURITY AND WELFARE.

QF a number of important questions dealt with in an interesting way by the Minister of Health (Mr Nordmeyer) when he spoke in the Budget debate in the House of -Representatives last evening, some were in a measure controversial. For instance the contention that thrift is penalised under the Social Security scheme as it stands is not met by the admitted facts, adduced by the Minister, that age and other benefits now in force are. much more liberal than those that were available under preceding pension schemes.

That certainly is true, but. it is also true that superannuitants and others who by independent effort have made just enough provision for their old age to disqualify themselves for social security age benefits suffer injustice and hardship. No full remedy is provided for this injustice in the arrangement announcecf in the Budget under which people in this category are not to be worse off than if they were eligible for social security age benefits.

Justice demands that people who by independent thrift have made provision for their old age should be enabled to derive some reasonably substantial benefit from doing so. .Until the basis of the social security scheme is altered in that way — more rapidly than it is being altered under the gradual increase in the national superannuation which becomes available at the age of 65—people in this category will continue to be unfairly penalised, increasingly as the years extend, through having to make their full contribution to social security taxation, though they are debarred from the principal social security benefit.

A number of other questions with which the Health Minister dealt last evening are or should by definitely non-contro-versial in character. There should be general agreement, for example on the desirability of developing a home nursing service, and also a domestic assistance service in which equitable regard would be paid to the welfare and interests of the domestic assistants as, well as of their employers. An earnest and impressive appeal for the establishment of a service of this kind was made in the House, at an earlier stage of the Budget debate by Mrs Grigg, an Opposition member who is retiring from Parliament this year.