THE GAMING BILL.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXI, Issue 15456, 7 November 1910, Page 6

THE GAMING BILL.

Wk hope that those members of the House of Representatives who are preparing to move amendments in the Gaming Bill will remember that it would be very oasy to wreck the measure altogether by factious opposition at the present stage. The Bill as it In* returned Irom the special committors to which it was referred is largely the result of n. compromise between the friends of tho racing clubs and the advocates of drastic reform, stimulated by a mutual dislike for the bookmaker, and unless iho compact in its essential details ::; accepted by the Houso either side may raise difficulties that would make iLs passage impossible during tho present sossien. Tho bookmaker Rooms to have had no friend at all on the committee, and now ~Mr T. E. Taylor is proposing to add lo his tribulations by making him liable to arrest without warrant by any constable who may suspect him of contemplating a breach of the law. Sir William Steward, wishing to make assurance doubly sure, as our parliamentary correspondent puts it, proposes to keep tho bookmaker away from sports grounds and rifle ranges, as well as away from racecourses, and if ho gels his way tho gentlemen who have been basking in the sunshine of legal recognition during the past two or t.hroe years will find

! their lot :ni extremely unhappy one. { But we really think that when the bookmaker lias been deprived of his I occupation and branded as an enemy to I public morality and good government I it will be unnecessary to place any furI ther disability upon him. Ho will bo a 'Harmless onoimh sort of person if tho I Bill reaches tho Statute Book in its j present shape. Mr Taylor is also anxious to reduco the number of totalisator permits to two hundred a i year but we are afraid that this would press hardly upon a number of country racing clubs, which are often as well managed as the metropolitan clubs a-re, without materially lessening the volume of gambling. Probably Mr Wright's amendments would not meet with a "rent deal of opposition from the racing clubs, but there is no reason to suppose that the officials require police inspection to keep them in order or that they deliberately delay the starting of races with a view to increasing the investments on the totalisator. The danger of introducing n number of amendments to the Bill when members are anxious to get away from Wellington is that they will he adopted without sufficient consideration or that they will lead io tho whole measure being postponed. It would bo better to pass tho Bill with all its defects than to have the life of the legalised bookmaker prolonged for another two' or three years.