Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1947 ART UNIONS AND LOTTERIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 18, 18 April 1947, Page 4

Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1947 ART UNIONS AND LOTTERIES

FIGURES for the year ended March 31 last show that in 12 months some 2,242,000 art union tickets were sold in the Dominion. The gross return was £280,239 of which £93,000 was distributed for charitable purposes, patriotic funds and children’s health camps. These monthly art unions have become a national institution; they enable the people to have a modest half-crown “flutter” with a chance of something more than 600 to 1 against winning a prize; the State benefits through a lottery duty which last year yielded £28,000 and in the end charity is helped after substantial commission and expenses have been paid. The art unions, therefore, have become an important small industry. This form of lottery is accepted without discernible protest from any section of the community, but if it were proposed that the State should establish a lottery of large dimensions which might give “investors” a more alluring run for their money, there would probably be a stream of protests which the Government would feel it inexpedient to ignore. This is one more example of a curious head-in-the-sand atttiude which has become a New Zealand characteristic. Certain forms of gambling are barred by law, but everybody knows they are carried on in spite of the occasional Police Court “casualties.” Probably for the worse, New Zealand has for some time been in the grip of a gambling epidemic. The totalisktor returns, still rising, show that the public, or a large section of it, possesses more money than it can use profitably in other ways. At least one large lottery run outside New Zealand is extensively and apparently profitably patronised in this country. The surplus money available could be used in many ways for the benefit of deserving causes in the Dominion. If it is morally unobjectionable to pass art union profits on to charity, there is no moral reason why a quest should not begin for larger revenue so that good causes could be further prospered. The Government should have the courage to authorise the experiment. There is hot money in the hands of the people; it is being passed through illegal as well as legal channels and much of it could be directed to good ends.