LOTTERY MONEY

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 November 1931, Page 8

LOTTERY MONEY

■■hospitals not benefiting."

SYDNEY, October 19. “The Government has not acted in good faith in regard t° ineol “® fl ’mt the State Lottery. The statement that the hospitals arc obtaining *n° ic oU sffiy than last year .^‘inite ly mmIcading. The obvious tact is that the ncome from the lottery is not being used to supplement the vote which as for many years been necessary for hospitals. Because the statement has been made that hospitals are benefiting as a result of the lottery, a certain form of private contributions has been lost, :and so the hospitals are, if anything ,losers, by the introduction of the lottery.” The foregoing remarks were made by Mr Stevens, deputy leader of the State Opposition, in a speech at the opening of the Western Suburbs Hospital tete at Croydon on Saturday afternoon. •Ho said that the National Government had grappled with the question of putting hospital?? on a proper tooting by passing the present Act, which provided for supervision by a commission. The Labour Government fortunately, had not interfered with this Act which had proved to be fundamentally sound. The Commission had been unable to carry out its broad policy because of the limitation of funds placed at its disposal, especially tor building work. Mr Stevens said it was pleasing to note that the scheme of systematic contributions, introduced by the Commission, had been taken up in country districts, and had, in almost eveiy case, proved a success. He noticed from day to day, reports of the annual transactions of a number of the country hospitals, and saw that a great improvement, in their finances had resulted from the organisation of the scheme. He also noted that it was proposed to introduce this system in the metropolitan area, and from the information available of similar movements in other parts of the world, it seemed to be clearly indicated that this would go a long way towards stabilising the* finances of the hospital-;. Dlr M. L. F» Jarvie, M.L.A., said, although there was a profit of £90,000 on the ten lotteries that had been drawn, he doubted whether a penny piece had gone into the hospital funds.

A LEGAL PROBLEM. The question whether a person is entitled to buy tickets in the State Lottery and then resell them in shares was before Mr Laidlaw, C.S.M., at the Central Summons Court yesterday. Rufe Naylor, of 121 Pitt Street, Sydney, was charged by Inspector Russell with having knowingly used a room on the first, floor of Swan’s Building, 121 I'itt Street, Sydney, in contravention of the Gaming and Betting Act, 1912, by the sale of shares in the disposal of money by chance. Albert McKeand was charged with aiding and abetting Naylor. Air A. W. Barry ,for the prosecution) paid that Naylor had bought tickets in the State Lottery at 5/3 a ticket, and had then divided each lottery number into seyen shares, and had sold the shares in books. Ine of these books of seven shares had been sold to-a constable for 67-- A single share had been sold to a constable for 1/-. In the event of one of the shares being in a winning number, the holder was to apply to Naylor for one-seventh of the prize. Mr R- Sproule (for the defendants) admitted the facts that shares had been sold to a constable. He said that there was no dispute on the facts. It was a question of law. Air Laidlaw said that he did not expect that the decision would be allowed to go unchallenged, but would be taken to a higher Court. He adjourned the hearing of argument of counsel.