GAMBLING IN AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 30, 4 August 1923, Page 11

GAMBLING IN AUSTRALIA

BIG TOTE FIGURES

(PROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

SYDNEY, 26th July

That horse racing and its concomitant, ■betting, are ruling passions in Australia admits of no argument. Figures tell their own. story. According to the latest New South Wales Treasury report, the yearly totalisator investments in this State between 1918 and 1923 increased to the extent of £2,000,000, and the bookmaker, who bets alongside the machine, seems to flourish more than ever. The gross investments in the tote from 1918 to 1923 were, to be precise, £15,----397,886. Multiply that only eight times, and one will find that the total would be jiwt about the cost of America's Civil War. Again, in the face of much unemployment and dull conditions generally, tote investments at metropolitan horse courses increased by over £150,000 during the year. Tcte investments on the pony courses, however, for the year showed a bit of a slump, decreasing by £299,000. While reformers may cry out against the Philistines who pour all this money into the racecourses and the totalisator, as well as into the bookmakers' pockets, the fact remains that people ■will bet on anything. Horses need not necessarily be the instrument of their little plunges. Even clergymen sometimes like their little flutter. Only a week back a prominent Anglican clergyman in Sydney openly bet his audience a brand new hat—how it was to fit the heads of the collective audience he did not say—that if he had had a chance to get quietly among the coalminers he could have settled their strike long ago. The- virus of betting, like the measles and the mumps, is one of those contagious things that touches all classes here in one form 'or another.