M.P. asks for better deal for punters

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32701, 2 September 1971, Page 8

M.P. asks for better deal for punters

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, September 1. A plea for a better deal for the punter was made in Parliament by Mr P. Blanchfield (Lab., Westland).

Speaking during debate on the Department of Internal Affairs Estimates, he said there was “great dissatisfaction” about the situation in

which a better could get less than a dollar back for his dollar invested on a winning horse. He said the Minister of Internal Affairs should consider legislation to provide for a full dollar to be the minimum return on a winning horse.

As a smaller dividend did not often occur, the cost would not be very great, he said, to prevent this “rank injustice to the ordinary punter.” He said the money possibly could be made up from the unclaimed dividends and fractions which last year provided about $66,000 extra to racing clubs and the Totalisator Agency Board. In reply, the Minister of . Internal Affairs (Mr Seath) 'said it had to be remembered that out of investments on horses, 17 per cent went into lottery duty, and this increased to 20 per cent of bets on doubles races.

If a punter were to have a dollar guaranteed for a bet on a winning horse, he said, this meant that he was not going to be obliged to pay his share of lottery duty and someone else would have to pay it for him.