“SHEER HYPOCRISY”

Southland Times, Issue 21177, 2 September 1930, Page 11

“SHEER HYPOCRISY”

GOVERNMENT’S RACING BILL. LEGALIZING TRANSMISSION OF INVESTMENTS. (Per United Press Association.) Wellington, September 1. That the Bill to legalize the publication oL-racing dividends and the transmission of investments which is expected to come before Parliament this week, has the sole aim of the racing clubs’ financial benefit •was the contention of the Rev. W. J. Blanchard in a sermon at St. John’s Presbyterian Church. Mr Blanchard said the contention that the Bill would eliminate the bookmaker was -an excuse and not a conviction, put forward to give the Bill the appearance of righteousness and to provide a sop to' the conscience of the “wobblers” among the politicians. It was sheer hypocrisy. The real object of the Bill was to put money into the pockets of the racing clubs, and if their demands were acceded to, the results would be most injurious. The publication of dividends would provide the incitement and the Telegraph Office an easy opportunity for anybody to invest on any race run anywhere in the Dominion. It required little imagination to realize how enormously the volume of betting would be increased on the majority of working days of each week, and the Telegraph Office throughout the land would be a huge betting machine. The fact that the bookwas already using the telephone and the telegraph was no justification for the same abuse being perpetrated by the totalisator. The bookmakers’ illegal parasitism could be stopped by the Commissioner of Police if he were given a free hand for dealing both with the bookmaker and the interesting names which could be found on bookmakers’ records. Gambling was already on the way to “white anting” the public and social life of the Dominion.