On this question, I would again say that the new method of calculation will mean great hardship to many people who have been looking forward to the pension, and who will be deprived of it by the operation of this Section. It is not intended that the Section shall apply for those who became, before the passing of the Act, entitled to receive a pension. I wonder does that mean that any person who was seventy years of age, and who was entitled, before the passing of the Act, under the terms and conditions of the law at the time, to claim a pension when he became seventy, will be excluded from the operation of this Section? I think such persons will. I hope they will, because it will relieve a few people at any rate from the penalties imposed by the Minister in the Bill.
The new method of calculation—the capital value of the property of the thrifty—imposing upon them a charge of 10 per cent. as income deemed to be derived from such property, as against the 5 per cent. which has hitherto been charged, is going to limit very considerably the number of people who have been looking forward to receiving pensions from the State. I think one might say, by virtue of the fact that they have this little property as a result, probably, of thrifty ways, that they are decent citizens, and should not be penalised therefor. I think the Minister, in the course of discussions on other amendments, rather deprecated the making of differences between one person and another who are pensioners. He is afraid that differentiation as between, say, 75 and 74 years, would be difficult and detrimental to the proper working of the Act.
I put it to him that the calculation of means on the new basis for new pensioners will be equally detrimental. There are, say, two brothers, or a brother and sister, or more likely, two sisters, in a family, each of whom has a certain little property. One was 70 years of age last year and came into her pension. The properties are equal in value. The other comes into her pension next year. Her pension may be lost altogether, because of the different method of valuing the property. You are going to charge 5 per cent. against the elder sister's property, and you are going to charge 10 per cent. against the younger sister's property. Will that give the sense of equal justice that the Minister would like to see generated? I think it will not. In this case it is penalisation because of youth. One year's difference in the date of birth may mean the difference between a 4/- a week pension and no pension at all. But it certainly will mean a difference, and no good case is being made to reduce the pension on account of the difference in the method of valuation. To charge the property owners in this case, as I have already stated, as if that property were terminable and as if once a certain number of years had passed the property rights vanished, and to apply that only to old age pensioners, is a differentiation against the Old Age Pensioner and in favour of the property owner, who has been taught and encouraged by the State to look upon that property as something that is evergreen and ever growing. In this case the Old Age Pensioners' property is to be treated as something declining in value and eaten away at the rate of 10 per cent. per annum, and that, I say, is a differentiation in the attitude of the State towards the poor pensioner as compared with the attitude of the State towards the rich non-pensioner.
