PLAIN SPEAKING ON RACING CONTROL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 113, 3 August 1927, Page 9

PLAIN SPEAKING ON RACING CONTROL

WAIKATO INCIDENT SUPPORT FOR MINISTER i THE SUN'S Parliamentary Reporter .) WELLINGTON, To-day. “T FEEL that the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. R. F. Bollard, will have the backing of this House in his attitude toward the Waikato Racing Club,” declared Mr. W. Parry, Auckland Central, while speaking in the House today. Mr. Parry said Mr. Bollard was the only reasonable Minister in the Cabinet, and the only one who had the courage to express and stand by his convictions. Other Ministers had knuckled down and fallen into line with whatever the racing authorities required. The attitude of the Racing Conference in granting the Waikato Racing Club Labour Day over the heads of the Waikato Hunt Club, was dictatorial. Mr. Parry suggesting that it was time a man of Mr. Bollard’s independence should convince the racing heads that they could not rule the Government of the country. “IN FAVOUR OF WEALTH’’ Mr. V. H. Potter complained vigorously that the Racing Conference was discriminating in favour of wealth to the detriment of the working man. The chairman of the conference. Sir George Clifford, had dlucd racing as an industry, but M:*. otter felt this was a move to have racing based as an industry in the Department of Industries and Commerce. Personally he thought it would be far better if it were controlled by the Government instead of by the conference, which possessed powers not held by any other private body in New Zealand —in fact, in the world, so far as Mr. Potter knew. The action of the Racing Conference in respect to convicted persons. They had been granted the right of applying to the conference for admission to racecourses, simply because some of the convicted men-—at least one—had owned a racehorse. “So,” went on Mr. Potter. “the Racing Conference is discriminating in favour of those who are worth something to them. When I come to consider that is not the wealthy people of the Dominion who are keeping racing going, but the rank and flic, I hope legislation will be introduced not to allow the discretionary powers of the conference to bar a working man from entering a racecourse and permitting the wealthy man to do so. Character and not wealth and position, should be the only consideration to weigh in this subject.”