THE GAMING BILL

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17804, 31 August 1929, Page 9

THE GAMING BILL

STRONG OPPOSITION

ROUGH PASSAGE PREDICTED. PROMOTERS NOT SANGUINE. (Special to Times.) WELLINGTON, Friday, j Judging from the reception accorded : Sir George Hunter’s Gaming Amendment Bill when it was returned to the House of Representatives on Tuesday, with a recommendation from the Petitions Committee that it should toe allowed to proceed, the measure is not going to have a very smooth passage through the House. The important clauses of the Bill provide for the legalising of the publication of the amount of dividends and for the tele—- ' graphing of investments to the totalisator during the progress of race meetings. Mr H. T. Armstrong, the Labour member for Christchurch | North, led off the chorus of opposi- ; tion to the Bill, declaring that if the j bill came before the House “it would get the roughest passage any Bill ever had received.” Sir George Hunter, personally the most popular member of the House, produced r. number of petitions in favour of the Bill, but still the House refused to be impressed by the measure and finally it was “talked i out” to await another opportunity to reach the haven of a second reading. A National Menace. At the moment the promoters of the Bill are not very sanguine of getting the measure through the House in its present form. The publication of dividends is a comparatively small matter, affecting only the newspaper offices, which are debarred from supplying information which the man in the street or anyone else may distribute as he 1 pleases. The telegraphing of investments to the racecourse, however, is quite another matter. The Petitions J Committee, it is understood, sought 1 no opinions from the officers of the Post and Telegraph Department on this proposal. Had it done so it would have been told of a score of objections to officers of the department being employed on race days—some 280 a year—in the service pf the racing clubs and the totalisator. The opportunities for the perpetration of frauds would be enormously increased by the adoption of the scheme and scores of young people would be driven into perils they never had encountered before. This is the considered opinion of an official high up in the public service.