New housie controls on November 1

Press, 3 September 1986, Page 6

New housie controls on November 1

PA Wellington New regulations for controlling and running housie will come into force on November 1.

The regulations are aimed at breaking illegal housie rackets, and have taken more than two years to bring together.

The Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Tapsell, said last year that illegal practices in the game were widespread, and “cheats” were using it as a get-rich scheme.

Housie is supposed to benefit charities. The Internal Affairs executive officer for gaming and racing, Mr

Rodger Beatty, said the department was issuing notices about the new licences.

He said that if the operators did not have a new licence by November 1, they would not be allowed to run any housie sessions. They would, however, still be entitled to apply for a new licence.

Mr Beatty said two new card systems had been introduced to help eliminate cheating such as callers memorising card numbers to call to a friend planted in the audience.

One system is to issue a new card for every game in a session, the other is where a card is used for a whole session and then destroyed.

“The numbers on each card must be serialised and recorded each night on an audit statement,” he said.

He also said the organiser had to bank takings within three days of the session and was not now allowed to be a signatory to the account. “The organisers have not got access to the money as they did before.”