AIDING BOOKMAKERS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8350, 10 February 1913, Page 10

AIDING BOOKMAKERS

PRYING BY POST OFFICE OFFICALS DEPRECATED. POSTMASTER-GENERAL DEFINES THE POSITION. Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, February 9. The Hon. R. Heaton Rhodes, Post-master-General arrived from Wellington to-day, and leaves by the first express to-morrow for Dunedin, Queenstown, and Mount Cook. In an interview the Minister referred to an article in a local newspaper, alleging that a postmaster is aiding and abetting bookmakers in offering incitements to young men to gamble on horse races by delivering betting cards posted by bookmakers. Mr Rhodes said that undoubtedly by section 28 of the Post and Telegraph Act, 1908, the Postmaster-General has a right to prevent delivery of correspondence to any person either in New Zealand or abroad who ho has reasonable grounds to suppose is engaged in receiving any money as consideration for an assurance expressed or implied to pay money on an event relating to a horse race—that is to say, shortly, who is engaged in betting. That betting cards are sent through the post is a matter of common knowledge to the postmaster and his officers. If these betting cards are sent in open envelopes they are open to the scrutiny of a postmaster, who then may reasonably be supposed to be at liberty to take the action in regard to them allowed and prescribed by section 30 of the Act. When cards are in closed envelopes the post office is in a different position.

Apart from the fact that presumably a postal officer has no means of ascertaining the contents of a closed postal packet, the Postmaster-General deprecates in his officers any system of prying or espionage in respect even of opes packets, and officers are expected and are accustomed only to challenge such breaches of the lair as their usual duty discharged in the usual iray makes them cognisant of the fact of an infraction of the provisions of the law and of coming under the animadversion of section 28 of the Act. Thus, it becomes a matter of legal proof generally on the part of persons outside the post office. When such proof is offered the Postipfber-General he is under the necessity of taking notice of it. In any case the matter has again to be referred to the SolicitorGeneral, with a view to ascertaining what, if any, responsibility the Post-master-General has to take further action.