STATE LOTTERIES.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 48, 12 March 1937, Page 4

STATE LOTTERIES.

The question of instituting State lotteries in New Zealand with a view to providing funds towards the upkeep of qu'r hospitals has been under public diseussion in more than one quarter during the week. At the conference of hospital boards the proposai was turned down, though by no means unanimously. At some Farmers* Hnion meetings it has met with support. There is certainly no need for encduraging the gambling instinct in this country and, in this regard, the only argument to be advanced is that a properly conducted State lottery xnight provide the most innoeupus form of safcty valve. As matters stand at present, there are undqubtedly hun^reds of thousands of pounds leaving the country for "inyestment" in Australian ventures of the kind, and of every such pound about 7/- stays there. That is, of course, on the assumption that New Zealand gets its proportionate share of the prize-money. In this way the Domiaioiji is in effect contributing some good few seores of thousands of poupds every year either to the premoters of a big Tasamnian * 'eonsultatioa," to the Tasmanian Government, or to the hospitals of New Soutfe Wales and Queensland. The natural question that arises is as to whether it might not be better that this big outgoing sfiould be retaihed in this country for. the benefit of our own hospitals or charities. For our own Government to shrink from this suggestion and at the same time encourage "art unions," from which they take the great bulk of the subscriptions for like but undefined purposes, savours a good deal of hypocrisy. This remark applies, of course, as much or more to the Government under which these art unions first took shape and then developed as to the present Government which is merely continujng therm