New Zealand And New Britain

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 182, 18 December 1942, Page 3

New Zealand And New Britain

our "slightly frivolous" reference last week to the Beveridge plan meant that we are not interested in social security or felt our "style cramped" by the fact that we are Government-controlled. It would be as sensible to ask if we lack interest in food, clothing, and shelter. Our subject last week was the fact that we have no his-tory-nothing to forget, and very little to boast about; but we expressly named social security as one of the things that we could boast about, and should. We shall probably do a good deal .more boasting about the New Zealand scheme when a full outline of the Beveridge plan comes to hand from London; but so far our excuse has to be what Sir William Beveridge himself said in his BBC ‘broadcast — that New Zealand’s was the only scheme he had \ CORRESPONDENT asks if thought worthy of imitation. He of | course did not say, or suggest, that other countries had nothing to teach him. Neither do we say or suggest that. Social revolutions do not spring ready-made from the brain of one man or appear suddenly in the programme of a single government. Long before they emerge as a political programme they have been talked ‘about, thought about, dreamt about by thousands of unknown people; and even when they take shape as practical proposals they are pruned, shaped, curtailed, or extended by public opinion, Sir William Beveridge is still in the blue-print stage. The New Zealand scheme, though it is operating far more smoothly than its authors in their most optimistic moments can have expected, will grow and change. But it justifies Sir William’s faith in what he now calls New Britain. It was not so much a model he wanted as confidence, and New Zealand gave him confidence.