THE NATION'S RACING BILL

Evening Star, Issue 15540, 9 July 1914, Page 3

THE NATION'S RACING BILL

VIGOROUS ANTI-GAMBLIXG SERMON.

"They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind" was the text upon which the Rev. Howard Elliott based an outspoken sermon on the subject- of legalised gambling when preaching at the Baptist Church, Mount Eden, Auckland, on Sunday night last. When a nation, through its Parliament, he remarked, permitted practices which debased the moral life of its people, undermined its social order, and imperilled its financial wellbeing, then it was sowing a wind the harvest of. which was the whirlwind of destruction.

"New Zealand," he declared, "is the greatest gambling country in the southern hemisphere, excepting possibly the Argentine. We gamble four times as much at> any of the Australian States, and yet it is proposed to increase the gambling facilities bv 12J per cent.'' The speaker went on to say that -Mr Hunter's Bill, which was now before Parliament, proposed to extend tiie totalisator permits by thirty, which was practically a 12i per cent, increase. "An investigation of the figures of New Zealand racing.* said Mr KHiott. "disclosed an alarming result. The amount of gambling through the totalisator j..;; doubled"during the last seven vears. J" 1906-07 it was £1,837.000; in 1912-15 jnst over £3,000,000; while this year it is computed k> amount to a total of £3.500,000. The Auckland figures for this season, as compared with those of last, show an increase of £155,523—£834.550, as against £679.027." Apart from this, many r.'uing clubs in the Dominion were showing % much bigger rate of increase, amounting in some cases to 25 per cent, on totalisatcr investments.

The speaker remarked that it the whole of the moneys which were spent upon racing in New Zealand were allowed >'«:. which it was not possible to do under •■>:- isting conditions, * the expenditure upon racin.' must amount, to ±!<'.SOO,UGO c £8,000,000 per year. "The question arises." he added. " what action should do taken? There is need for the most emphatic protest to Parliament against the extension of the number of totahcatcv per mits. Any Parliament which woujd. ic the face of the figures quoted, extend th operations of this octopus, which is sucking the moral and spiritual and the niiiwcial life-blood of the community, may be "accused and condemned of legislating for the Devil."