20

report of the South Australian Royal Commission on Betting of 1932-33, the report of the South Australian Royal Commission on Betting Laws and Practice of 1938, and the report of the Royal Commission appointed in Queensland in 1936 to inquire into matters relating to racing and gaming. We also read with care the reports published in South Africa of the proceedings of the Commission in the Transvaal on racing and betting. This Commission was sitting at the same time as our own Commission. 4. Cases were submitted to us by the New Zealand Racing Conference, the New Zealand Trotting Conference, the Dominion Sportsmen's Association, and by an Association of Churches constituted of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, the Congregational Church, the Church of Christ, the Salvation Army, and the Society of Friends. A case was also submitted to us by the Public and Social Affairs Committee of the Church of the Province of New Zealand, commonly known as the Church of England, whilst, with the approbation of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wellington,, evidence was tendered to us by a priest of the Roman Catholic Church on behalf of a number of organizations representative of the social, educational, and charitable activities of that Church at Napier. Evidence was also given before us by an official representative of the Christian Science Church. In addition, we had the advantage of hearing the evidence of a number of individual clergymen and other gentlemen opposed to gambling. 5. The better to enable us to form an opinion upon the nature and extent of the landed and financial interests involved in racing and to enable us to get a more accurate and comprehensive view of many of the other phases of the questions referred to us, we visited most of the racecourses in New Zealand and there met, informally, the people responsible for the administration of the racing on those courses. For the same reasons, we also visited several of the major studs. 6. As the work of the Commission proceeded it became increasingly obvious that two questions would obtrude themselves as of primary importance —firstly, whether gambling is or is not unethical and whether or not it should, in consequence, be repressed by the State to the maximum limit which the moral standards of the community will from time to time permit; and, secondly, whether bookmakers should be licensed to carry on their businesses not upon the racecourses of the country, but in premises to which members of the public are denied all physical access. 7. In close association with the latter question and in consequence of it, the question was raised as to whether facilities should be authorized by law for off-course betting on the totalizator.