STATE LOTTERIES

Taranaki Daily News, 29 August 1933, Page 3

STATE LOTTERIES

DISCUSSION IN AUSTRALIA NEW SOUTH WALES PRIZES. SUPPORT BY GOVERNMENT. The New South Wales Government will not abolish the State lottery. The majority of Ministers and members of the Ministerial parties consider that, in the existing circumstances, it cannot be abolished. They contend that it is impossible to finance the hospitals without the additional revenue. The only alternative to the lottery, they point out, is additional taxation. As the Government has promised to reduce taxation, this method of raising revenue is not open to them. . A section of the Ministerial parties, says the Sydney Morning Herald, may urge the Government to adopt the policy of making the State lottery more attractive. This, they say, can be . done by introducing on occasions £1 tickets and by increasing the first prize to £25,000, on similar lines to the Queensland lottery. During the past few months there has been a serious falling off in the revenue from the State lottery, doubtless because large sums of money are being sent weekly from New South Wales to Queensland for investment in I the lottery in that State. i ASSISTANCE TO HOSPITALS. The Minister of Health, Mr. Weaver, has pointed out on a number of occasions that last financial year the Government received from the lottery £BOO,OOO. For every 5s 3d invested by the public the hospitals receive a little less than 2s for maintenance purposes. The hospitals are costing the Government nearly £BOO,OOO a year to maintain. The Government has also advanced £395,000 out of the unemployed relief fund for the construction, extension and improvements of hospitals. Mr. Colvin, who recently succeeded Mr. Whiddon as State lottery director, was only appointed by the Government for a period of three months. It was learned in Ministerial circles recently that at the expiration of that period Mr. Colvin’s term will be extended. The future of the State lottery, and the Government’s policy, will be considered by the Cabinet at an early date. “If the opponents of the lottery concentrated on expending that surplus energy of. theirs in trying to eradicate evils in our midst instead of bombarding with deputations the officials of the harmless little lottery, they would be doing the country a service,” said the Rev. Father Mark Carlton in a recent address to the men’s branch of the Newcastle Sacred Heart Confraternity. REFERENCE TO RACECOURSES. “To be consistent, the people who are endeavouring to stop the lottery must also close all the racecourses in ’New South Wales, and forbid all games of cards where there is even a halfpenny at stake.. If this state of affairs comes about, ybu can imagine what kind of a place New South Wales will be to live in. I can visualise a tremendous migration to other States, and those who are left will soon get tired of their morbid existence.” Father Carlton said that while the wrangling about the State lottery was going on, Queensland was laughing at New South Wales, and hoping that the lottery in New South Wales would be stopped. Queensland hospitals would flourish and expand, while those of New South Wales would go into decay for lack of funds. The lottery was the poor man’s chance of winning money. The man of means could go out to the racecourse, pay entrance fees and make his bet, said Father- Carlton. He was delighted that up to date the people who had won the lottery mostly needed the money badly. He opposed anybody who was going to take the lottery from such people and from the hospitals which needed it so badly. The lottery was taxation by painless extraction, and it was performing a magnificent service to the country. SUPPORT FROM THE MINISTER. The Minister of Health. Mr. Weaver, in reply to criticisms of the lottery, says: “I have yet to learn that the citizens of Victoria, South Australia and Western- Australia are more religious, more honest, more moral, or more trustworthy because there is not a lottery in those States, than are the people of New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania, where there is a lottery. “It is complained that the lottery is an inducement to gamble. As an exaggerated illustration it might also be alleged that the growing of fruit trees is an incentive to make small .boys steal, or the lay-by system in our draperystores is an incentive to people who cannot afford the money to place a deposit on goods of high quality, the purchase of which in many instances they cannot complete. “Suppose that we ban food, because it is alleged that half the human beings destroy their health by their diet; should we prohibit insurance because it opens up an avenue for some people to commit arson to draw insurance money?”