GAMING AND LOTTERIES BILL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8987, 23 November 1907, Page 5

GAMING AND LOTTERIES BILL.

THREE CAMPS AND A COMPROMISE.

MY TKI.KGRAI'H I'IiKSS ASSOCIATION. WELLINGTON, Friday. In the Legislative Council, this afternoon, the Gaming and Lotteries Act Amendment Bill was received from the House of Representatives and read a first time. The Attorney-General immediatley moved the second reading and stated that the bill was rendered necessary by the most marked and growing of evils. Three distinct camps were ? n evidence on this question. There was the totalisator camp, the bookmakers' camp, and what he might call the puritan camp. The puritans strove for the abolition of the totalisator, the totalisator camp for the maintenance of the totalisator, and the bookmakers said that men of limited means, who cannot afford to bet on the totalisator, should be permitted to make minor bets. The bill was a plain working compromise between the three broad camps he had outlined.

The Hon. H. F. Wigram se:onded the motion, and congratulated the Government on the boldness it had displayed in dealing with this question. He objected to clause 35 (licensing bookmakers.) Betting, he contended, should be strictly confined to the totalisator, and he hoped the clause for licensing bookmakers would be struck out.

A long discussion ensued mainly in support of the bill. The Hon. T. K. Macdonald attacked the bill and particularly condemned the clauses for licensing bookmakers.

In. replying, th 3 Attorney-General said it would be the veriest cant to deny that associated with our vigorous national life was an evil which the bill sought to minimise. The second reading of the bill was carried on the voices, and the measure was then put into committee.

The Attorney-General moved to add to clause 31—making it an ofYence to publish dividends on a horse race--by making it an additional offence to publish "any statement from which dividends or starting prices might be calculated." This would, he said, prevent even the publication of figures relating to the support accorded to each horse. Mr Carncross said the bill hit the press, and hit it pretty hard, yet no murmur had been heard against it. The newspapers would observe the spirit of the Act. Dr. Findlay said ho had not the slightest doubt the reputable newspapers would do so, but there w s no disguising the fact that a section of the press which Mr Carncross could name would be only too ready to take advantage of any loophole.

The addition to the clause was agreed to on the voices, and the bill was reported with amendments, read a third time and passed.