Mr GOODLUCK —Will the Prime Minister give an assurance that age and service pensions will continue to be made payable to women when they attain the age of 60 years and that it was never under consideration by the Government to vary that situation?

Mr MALCOLM FRASER —This matter has not been under the consideration of the Government. Because it had been raised in other forums, I not unnaturally consulted with my colleague the Minister for Social Security to see whether he had it in contemplation to put any proposals before the Government. It is not in his contemplation; it is not one of the matters on his desk. I think we need to understand that these payments have been made on an historic basis, because of a way of life to which many people have grown accustomed and which they have been led to expect. It would be rather unkind and unnecessary to upset those arrangements and the expectations that have come out of them. If patterns change some years in the future, so be it. When we have a circumstance in which many people qualify either for an age pension or in some cases for a widow's pension, if those pensions did not exist those people would merely qualify for the unemployment benefit. There would then be no financial saving in that, but a social change would be forced on people which I personally would regard as most unfortunate. The issue is not in contemplation so far as the Government is concerned.