MR. LANG'S LOTTERIES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21274, 30 August 1932, Page 12

MR. LANG'S LOTTERIES

SUGGESTED ABOLITION A LION IN THE PATH ~ * . .jr;. »* r The New South Wales State lottery—bequeathed by the Lang Government, to its successors —may yet prove a SouthSea bubble. It may not have been conceive'd in* the minds of its originators as a means of paying o«? the national debt, says a Sydney correspondent, but; there are members of the Government > who believe that if it goes on much longer it will bo the ruination of thousands who invest although they have not got the money to spare. It is the current opinion that the majority of th* Cabinet are opposed to the lottery, and their desire is to drop it; but this can only bo done by putting wider margins of time between the drawings, which are carried out with ceremony and a long spoon on the stage of a theatre. It now appears that there is a lion in the path of such a wiping out of a human excitement, which, like the diceplaying of the Roman soldiers, has become an obsession. The lion i 9 Mr. Whiddon, at one time the daring Commissioner of Taxation who could extract money from the most stony-hearted citizens. Ho has been forbidden by the Premier to increase the price of tickets or to make the prizes larger, and there must be no special pound-a-ticket lottories—the pound being an incentive to dishonesty on the part of many who struggle to get 5s from sources that should bo carefully watched. - Mr. Whiddon says that he has consulted counsel and has been advised that his position entitles him to do what he likes to make any lottery a success. So it, has come to this—-the Premier, of the State, and the 'Treasurer to boot, is a person of less importance than tho controller of the State lottery and its machinery. The wholo thing is ludicrous and the revelation of the position must mean tho immediate amendment of the Act or tho suspension of it altogether.