Control of Race Meetings

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21975, 26 December 1936, Page 10

Control of Race Meetings

It will be noted with surprise that the Minister for Internal Affairs has decided to issue no totalisator licenses for trotting meetings in future unless the interval between races is, or may be, 40 minutes. This intervention cannot easily be disconnected from the case of the New Zealand Metropolitan Club, which recently broke the 35-minute rule of the Trotting Conference, was fined £IOO, appealed, and had its appeal dismissed in a judgment which is printed this morning. The Minister has informed the club, by letter, that the totalisator license for its January meeting is issued on condition that the 40-minute interval is adopted; and he has informed the Trotting Conference that the “ present unsatisfactory position ” cannot be allowed to continue. His action to terminate it is a simple refusal to issue further licenses “ until provision has been made for a “ variation of the rule.” It is not clear whether Mr Parry means that the conference must be prepared to authorise the longer or the shorter interval, according to circumstances, or that the rule must be amended to make 40 minutes general. The first is suggested by the wording; the second—which the wording does not exclude—is supported by the Minister’s statement that neither the Metropolitan nor any other club has been able to run to time with a 35minute interval, and by his positive ruling for the Metropolitan Club’s January meeting. If it is merely a more elastic rule that Mr Parry is demanding, it is not following a side-issue to ask what he would do if the conference compliantly adopted one but in practice disallowed the 40-minute interval. If there is now any partition between what Mr Parry is doing and dictating to the conference, there would be none then, because his only alternative to accepting the “unsatisfactory position” would be to coerce the conference. That may, indeed, be his unlimited intention now; it is not easy

the difference is only one of degree. It is dangerous for a Minister to intervene in the government of a sport by its proper authority, if, when he fails to influence, he has no option but to coerce; and if coercion, no less, is his design, then the design is still more dangerous and objectionable. The matter of the dictation is one which does not concern the Government, except as its revenue may be affected by the shutting out of a little money from the totalisator; and it would be deplorable if this were the motive of Government interference in the conduct of race meetings. On the other hand, the length of the interval is rightly a matter for regulation by the conference, the national organisation of the trotting clubs, as one in which they are considering the good of the sport and the wish of the public as well as totalisator revenue. Nobody can feel very much doubt that in ruling for a 35-minute interval the conference was guided by the desire of the public for briskly run meetings; and the conference is as certainly in a position to judge of that as it is within its province and its duty in governing the sport accordingly. The Minister can hardly have considered this, or he would not have advanced, as he appears to have done, too far to retreat.