Cabinet might back Lotto, says Minister

Press, 18 January 1986, Page 1

Cabinet might back Lotto, says Minister

PA Wellington The Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Tapsell, yesterday hinted strongly that the Cabinet would decide in favour of the proposed numbers game, Lotto. Mr Tapsell said the Cabinet would make a decision “in principle” on the game “within the next week or two.” But he said: “The real decision is not whether Lotto will be introduced, but where the money will be spent and who is going to spend it.” Mr Tapsell said he would support Lotto if it did not harm the racing industry and if it provided recreation for people of all levels of ability. He said he would have doubts about Lotto if it were merely a way of collecting money. “The extra money that people will spend on it won’t drop off trees,” he

said. It was the less-affluent who tended to gamble most. Mr Tapsell asked if the $7O million the racing industry paid each year in duty could be redirected into other areas. New Zealand needed to be wary of what had happened when Lotto was introduced in Australia, where the huge sports bureaucracy created had led to serious financial problems, he said. “There is a great deal of public concern in Australia about the way the whole thing has been running.” Mr Tapsell noted that Australia had done well on the international sports scene 10 years ago but was not doing quite so well now. “We’ve had New Zealand sportsmen and women doing pretty well for a country of our number but we may well find that in five to 10 years there is more money being spent but no more medals being won,” Mr Tap-

sell said. “Instead there could be a general army of sports administrators travelling all round the world.”

Mr Tapsell is keen for money to be spent not just on the elite sports people but on those who participate at lower levels. The arts and culture should be ignored, he said. Mr Tapsell was “bitterly disappointed” with the quality of submissions on the Lotto proposal, describing them as ‘Tather miserable little bits of paper.” “They all said why their group deserves special treatment, pointed out the fabulous work they were doing and how little money they had. The last line in the epistle is ‘We support Lotto’.”

Although the Cabinet decision was expected soon, Mr Tapsell said there should be time after it was made for the issue to be discussed fully.