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Lottery California Selling Hope
Selling Hope 
Elsewhere, Presbyterians led the charge. In Wellington, church leaders appealed to Prime Minister Massey to curb the new wave of california lottery that were ''demoralizing'' the public. Newspapers, so supportive of the Massey government’s wartime sanctioning of charitable art unions, were now critical. The New Zealand Herald commented that the excuse for the flood of art unions that had deluged the Dominion recently had been to provide means of recreation'' ... but the effect had been to foster that spirit of gambling which, inherent in the individual, is all too rife in all sections of society''. There was an even more fundamental concern that lottery organizers were violating the ''mineral specimen'' prize stipulation by paying the prizes in cash.
Way of Selling Tickets
Richard Bollard, the new Minister of Internal Affairs, was both sensitive to the criticism and in sympathy with it. His disquiet was heightened by a number of convictions for theft of lottery ticket money and by the Auckland arrest of a man attempting to sell bogus tickets for an Australian sweep. In November 1925 Truth called art unions ''scandalous'', asserted that jobbery (corruption) was rampant and challenged Bollard to tighten the laws. He did so in June 1926 by limiting the first prize to a maximum of ÂŁ500 (down from the previous 4,000), removing the provision for mineral specimens (to eliminate the twin abuses of ''manufactured gold'' and money pay-outs), and denying art unions radio advertising time. Other critics called for the state to run lotteries in order to raise funds for hospitals, institutions for the blind, charitable aid boards, pensions for widows, the elderly and disadvantaged, and soldiers'' pension funds. As the New Zealand Observer pointed out in February 1926, buyers would know they were helping a worthy cause even if they did not win a prize.
Raise Funds for Public
Bollard’s most powerful support came in a remarkable outburst of magisterial wrath from new Prime Minister Gordon Coates. Responding to a suggestion from the Raupo Drainage Board that monster art unions should be used to raise funds for public works, he said he would not consider this for a moment. What is New Zealand coming to that we resort to unions to raise money for public purposes? What are we bringing our children up to? Are we going to bring them up in an atmosphere of gambling? Where is that manhood that sturdy spirit of independence? It is not British. Either the proposed works are a necessity, or they are not. There remained much that was illogical and hypocritical in the government’s attitude towards gambling. In its lesser forms-fan tan, two-up and pakapoo-it was subject to ferocious attempts at repression, one effect of which was to excite public ridicule. The most cogent objection to large art unions was that they tended to become primarily profitable businesses for greedy promoters. Moreover, it was difficult to reconcile Coates'' denunciation of art unions with his support for the totalistic, on which a great deal more money was gambled with state approval. It was also difficult to understand the contrast between the government’s ready approval of art unions that raised money for sports or racing clubs and its refusal to sanction those suggested to fund public works projects such as land drainage and road construction. As the Free Lance reflected. ''The honest farmers who put their idea before the Prime Minister had logic on their side.
Yet Coates'' grandiloquent outburst was a harbinger of the future. Within a few years agitation began in earnest for New Zealand to set up its own government-controlled national california lottery. This would allow for greater checks and stem the continual hemorrhaging of funds to Australia. But successive ministers would shy away from the concept for fear that they, and their administrations, would be tainted with the specter of immorality not politically expedient in a society saturated with moral and social conservatism. |
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