GAMING LAW FIASCO

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 16, 13 February 1942, Page 4

GAMING LAW FIASCO

THE annual prosecution of a local bookmaker makes honest people once again marvel at the ingenious elasticity of our Gaming Laws. To all intents and purposes these were fashioned and gazetted with all solemnity merely to be steadily winked at by the administrators'of the law, in return for an occasional fine. Here is an evil to which we have become so used, that we fail to notice its very corruption. Either a thing is right or it is wrong, either it is the law or it is outside the law! This rule apparently applies in all other ii.stances except the Gaming Act. The truth is probably that the Government,, realising that we are a betting people, and not having the courage to repeal the old Act because of the considerable revenue from lines, accruing therefrom prefers to wink its eye for three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, and to take ponderous and dignified a,ction on the remaining one, on those who dare to flout the laws of the land. The wink unfortunately has grown so broad that it has assumed the proportions and standing of a 'gentleman's agreement' (if the term can Jbe applied without tarnish) between the offenders and the prosecutors, while the onlooking general public regard the whole procedure as notiling more or less than a standing joke. The honest way of overcoming the existing farce is to legalise the betting system under Government supervision so that it remains in the hands of present operators, who to-day are officially driven underground. The fine revenue would be more than offset by the license fees collected, while the whole monopoly would be placed on a clean and decent footing.