I move:— To delete the section.
In submitting this amendment I am actuated by a desire to make the Unemployment Insurance Bill as suitable as possible for the purpose for which it was originally conceived. At the present time, we know that there are many people paying unemployment insurance contributions who might be put into the category of permanent or semi-permanent employees. Most of those people never hope to gain anything in the way of benefit under the Unemployment Insurance Act, and the inducement at present to pay is the provision which the Act makes for refunding the amount of the contributions paid by such persons, plus 2½ per cent. compound interest, but less the amount paid to them in benefits. So long as that section of the Act remains, there is an inducement to people to contribute under the Act in the knowledge that ultimately their contributions will come back, but if the amending Bill is passed, and if this section of the Bill in particular is passed, it will mean that the provision which was made under the original Act for the refund of unemployment insurance contributions to persons reaching the age of 60 years will disappear, and instead compensation will only be payable to persons who reach the age of 50 years. That means that at 50 years of age a man will be entitled to what he has paid in, less what has been paid to him in benefits. This particular form of compensation is only applicable to men who have reached the age of 50, and the claim for this compensation must be made, in normal circumstances, within 12 months. It really means that a person who is less than 50 years of age will get no compensation whatever for contributions which he has paid in, and it means that people coming under the Unemployment Insurance Act or Acts in future will not have the inducement to pay contributions which is there already.
I put it to the Minister that it is wise, in the interests of unemployment insurance, that this particular provision should remain, because, at the present time, it encourages people to pay unemployment insurance contributions who, under a strange interpretation of the exemption provision, might get exemption or might be encouraged to evade payment of contributions. So long as the provision under the Act entitling them to a refund of the contributions, less the amount paid in benefits, remains, these people are encouraged to contribute, and I say that it is well and good that they should be encouraged to contribute under the Act, because by people of this class contributing the solvency of the Fund will be preserved, and in times such as the present it is very necessary that as many people as possible who are not likely to be a frequent liability on the Fund should contribute to the Fund for the purpose of maintaining its solvency.
There is one feature of this amendment that I would like to point out, and that is the fact that at the present time, after a period of three, four, or five years of industrial depression, when more men drew unemployment insurance than in any other period during which the Unemployment Insurance Act operated, men are asked to take now what stands to their credit, and in a great many cases it will mean that there is nothing to the credit of contributors, whereas if this section were introduced in circumstances free from the industrial depression which we have witnessed for the past few years, it would mean that men would have something to their credit. But men are being now asked to accept compensation in a period of very pronounced industrial depression, and at a time following a period of pronounced industrial depression. I think that the provision in the present Act entitling contributors to a refund of the amount of contributions paid by them, less the amount paid to them in benefits, is a good and suitable provision, and is calculated to maintain the solvency of the Unemployment Insurance Fund, and I suggest to the Minister that this is not the time to introduce an amending Bill with this particular feature in it. I hope that he can see his way to delete this section, even if it is to be considered —although I do not think it is one we ought to consider at all—in other circumstances and at another time.