Racing Conference ‘Not Obstructive’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31005, 10 March 1966, Page 7

Racing Conference ‘Not Obstructive’

(Neto Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, March 8

“My attention has been directed to a newspaper report concerning the resignation of Dr. D. Rogers as honorary surgeon to the Waikato Racing Club because of that club’s decision not to stage a Royal race meeting for the visit of the Queen Mother,” Mr G. H. Grigg, president of the New Zealand Racing Conference, said today.

“The point that concerns me mainly is a further passage in the message which reads: “The Racing Conference would not grant a permit.’

“The conference does not have a supply of surplus totalisator licences and in consequence is unable to grant any dub an additional licence,” he said. “Admittedly the Waikato Racing Club applied for one of the two totalisator days of racing abandoned during the current season by the

Greymouth Jockey Club for the purpose of conducting a Royal race meeting. Those two permits, being South Island permits, were allocated by the executive committee to South Island racing Clubs.

“Usually when a Royal race meeting is staged a special permiiit is made available by the Government, but seemingly it was net prepared to make special permits available for the racing and trotting meetings to be held in honour of the visit of the Queen Mother. Any club conducting such a meeting was required to do so with one of its current permits. “Neither the Racing Conference nor its executive committee was obstructive in the matter and the decision of the Waikato Racing Club not to conduct a Royal race meeting was purely a decision of the committee of that club,” said Mr Grigg. A representative of the Evangelical Church of Germany is to be invited to the annual meeting of the National Council of Churches in New Zealand, to be held in June. The invitation was a way of marking the twentyfifth anniversary of the National Council of Churches which had begun its interchurch aid immediately after the war by sending parcels to war-torn Germany, said the general secretary, the Rev. D. M. Taylor.