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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 75

The Old Age Pensions Bill, 1896

The Old Age Pensions Bill, 1896.

The Old Age Pensions Bill introduced by the Premier in 1896, on the eve of a general election, was crude and impossible, and obviously not meant to pass; but it was not essentially vicious in its cardinal provision. It was not a mere charitable aid measure, and it did not make poverty and idleness the necessary equipment of a pensioner. An applicant who had lived sixty-five years, and spent twenty of them in the colony, was to be entitled to a pension of 10s a week, provided "that his total income from all sources (exclusive of personal earnings and his pension) does not exceed the rate of £50 per year," which meant that, though a man with property producing an annual income of £50 was disqualified, it was not necessary for a man to give up work in order to qualify. But the House would not tolerate even the property disqualification, and removed any suspicion of pauperism by striking out the whole subsection, and thus giving to every man who satisfies the conditions of age and residence the right to a pension. The measure then became a genuine pension scheme, but the enormous addition to its financial difficulties entailed by this extension was made an excuse for dropping a Bill which, even as introduced, had no financial foundation at all.