Taranaki Herald. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1907. THE GAMING ACT.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13575, 6 December 1907, Page 4

Taranaki Herald. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1907. THE GAMING ACT.

Few laws made hy the New Zealand Parliament have created so much public interest as the Gaming and Lotteries Act Amendment Act, 1907, and the fact that this is so indicates how widespread the gambling- spirit is. On Tuesday the Minister of Internal Affairs was interviewed at Wellington by a deputation of bookmakers, who wished to strongly protest, not against the Act, for that suits them very well, but against what they called the arbitrary attitude taken up by the Feildiug Jockey Club, in not complying with the clause of the Act which provides that every racing club which is authorised to use the totalisator shall grant licenses to respectable bookmakers. The Club, it appears, notified that no bookmaker's clerk would be admitted to its course without a license, that betting by bookmakers should be confined to a specially reserved part of the course, and that no bets should be made later than five minutes before the advertised time of starting a race. Dr. Findlay received the deputation quite sympathetically, as of course he was bound to do, for the Government of which he is a member having gone so far as to give bookmakers a legal status must of necessity go a step further and see that the racing clubs also recognise them as the Act provides; Yet he must have felt that * the situation in which he was placed was an awkward one. He doubtless deplores as much as. anyone the growth of the gambling habit and is as sincere as. Anyone .in. his desire to check it. "Yet he was called upon to assist those' whose business and living is to encourage betting. Parliament has placed the bookmaker on a level with the totalisator and he is bound to see that the law is observed. He holds over the racing clubs the threat that, if they do not treat the^ bookmakers as Parliament intended, when passing the Act, they should be treated, the Government would not grant permits for the use of the totalisator. The 'position is a | very strange one for a Minister to ! find himself in ; in fact the whole thing is more worthy of comic opera than of serious legislation. Because the State recognises a betting machine — which does not tout and has never defaulted, an£ which does practically a cash business and is confined to the racecourses — it has decided to recognise on .equal terms a calling j which, honourable as some of its | members admittedly are, does tout and does sometimes default, which gives credit, and which it has hi- | therto been found impossible to control. Dr. Findlay silences his natural misgivings by believing, or affecting tp believe, that the effect of the new law will be to confine betting to the racecourses. The respectable bookmakers will be admitted there, when they and the pacing ' clubs have come to mutually satisfactory terms ; the others — if there are others — are, we suppose, expected to leave the Dominion or turn to some other means of obtaining a living. Another curious thing about the Act is that while it makes betting on a horse race legal on the course, and presumably, makes such abet recoverable at law, it makes betting on a footrace or bicycle race a crime. Again, it makes i£ an offence for a newspaper to inform its readers of the betting odds on a race, though the bet is quite legal, while it permits the transmission of similar information through the Telegraph Oflice.