GAMING LAW

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 291, 8 September 1928, Page 8

GAMING LAW

“BROKEN THOUSANDS OF TIMES A DAY” By Telegraph.—Press Association. Hastings, September 7. “I have no wish ‘o iriticise anybody,” said Mr. G. Ebbett, president of the‘Hawke’s Bay Trotting Club, in an address at the annual meeting to-day. “because many people who are quite 'honest, and really of the opinion that they are acting for the best at the same time, do many wrong things. lam willing to be’ieve that iu most instances this is brought about through ignorance. There are those of us who know that the cities of New Zealand are swarming with bookmakers and their agents. There are bookmakers in many freezing works and factories, and there is one in every hamlet in New Zealand. We also know that, could money be wired to the courses, half the ground, at least, would be taken from under the feet of these gentlemen. Of the thousands of people who trade with them illegally a huge proportion are not lawbreakers from choice, and if they could wire money legally they would do so—and then consider tlie increase in revenue. Yet, whenever this is proposed there is an uproar of opposition from people who are very noisy but wb 11. ve no inside knowledge of the positipn. There are those of us who know that, so long as human nature lasts, there will be gambling and drinking and other things, and that by legalising the wiring of money to courses the moral standard of the coinin'.nity would not be lowered by one fraction. Everybody who wants to bet now simply goes and does it, and the law is broken thousands of times every day. We are breeding a race of lawbreakers. All law Is being brought into contempt. “It is high time that we, who have the broader minds and the greater knowledge of these things, organised to see that men are elected to Parliament with sufficient courage to say that in their opinion a propo«..l of this kind is in the interests of the community, and they will support it because it is no. wise to have multitudes of bookmakers carrying on with impunity an illegal business throughout the Dominion.”