Sharing lottery proceeds

Press, 12 March 1983, Page 14

Sharing lottery proceeds

Some welfare agencies are unhappy with their share of Golden Kiwi lottery profits, according to the president of the New Zealand Federation of Voluntary Welfare organisations, Mr J. B. Munro. He says that grants from the Lottery Board’s distribution committees represent a very small and diminishing part of the income needed by agencies that are serving the handicapped and underprivileged. This may be so, but the figures that Mr Munro advances in support of his criticism of the way proceeds are distributed do not present the whole picture. More than $15.1 million was disbursed by the board last year. Mr Munro decries the fact that only 13 per cent of this went to general welfare agencies and another 9 per cent to agencies dealing specifically with the aged. The rest went to a multitude of charitable purposes to benefit the community. Mr Munro’s percentages are correct, but they do not indicate the full measure of the board’s aid. Sixty-nine applications for grants totalling $l.l million were approved for the welfare of the aged, and a further 271 applications for grants, totalling $2 million, were approved for other welfare agencies. In the last seven years, the amount disbursed for care of the aged has more than doubled and the amount for other welfare has increased fourfold. Such increases compare favourably with the rate of inflation. The relative decline in income of which Mr Munro speaks is not the result of tight-fistedness on the part of the board, but of the proliferation of welfare services and the thinner spread of grants. Seven years ago, the board’s welfare services distribution committee received 221 applications for assistance; last year it received more than three times that number — and approved 536 of them. The distribution committee dealing with the welfare of the aged also approved more grants last year than the total number of applications it was asked to consider seven years ago. Just as the number of welfare agencies

seeking assistance has increased, so has the number of applications from other bodies that the board is obliged by law to assist if possible. Youth services, medical and scientific research, the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, the New Zealand Film Commission, water safety, art galleries, litter control, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, cultural development, and sporting activities, all have a legitimate call on the funds of the Lottery Board. This list is by no means exhaustive. Payments in only one section of the list are actually larger than that made available for the section classed as “general welfare.” This is the $2.25 million fund available to local authorities for community development. Part of this allocation is applied to welfare work. The rest of it enables local councils to meet some of the demands placed on them by residents and local organisations without restricting the amount of rate money available for services that come within Mr Munro’s definition of welfare. Contributions from local councils to the organisations that Mr Munro represents would need to be reduced, or rates would have to be increased, or other community development forgone, if. the councils did not have this additional money from the Lottery Board. Most people who buy lottery tickets do so only with an eye to the chance of a big prize. They would regard the resulting $l5 million that can be spent on improving New Zealand society and way of life — without an increase in taxes or rates — as a bonus, if they consciously thought of it at all. The 1200 organisations and individuals who received grants from the board last year are well aware of the benefits that the board provides. The purse is limited and the demands upon it are ever-increasing. Grants -of $2 million will not meet ths needs of all welfare agencies, but it is a sum they could ill-afford to be without and does not fit the picture that Mr Munro seeks to paint.