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prove unduly remunerative to. the Auckland Racing Club until recent years. In 1937, however, it derived £329 from the arrangement. In the following year it derived £l2 only, but in the next five years it derived £479, £6BB, £1,280, £2,507, and £5,585 respectively. In 1944 its share was £2,625, and in 1945, £2,253. Last year its share fell to £1,154. Out of this very considerable profit over the last six years the Auckland Racing Club has set aside a trust fund of £4,000 for the hunt club. For the rest, over the years, it has profited in the aggregate to the extent of £14,304 from the licence granted to the hunt club. 325. No doubt the Pakuranga Hunt Club and the Waikato Hunt Club, by reason of the concentration of population in the centres in which they race, are assured of greater incomes than any other hunt club, but, in the aggregate, the clubs holding licences should easily be able to provide out of their surplus income an annual sum sufficient to provide for the needs of the five clubs which have now applied for licences. The needs of any club which may be formed hereafter also call for consideration. Care will have to be exercised to see that merely visionary clubs are not brought into existence by the lure of an assured income. 326. The idea under discussion was, in the course of our sittings, suggested to some of the representatives of the clubs applying for licences, and, in general, it met with a favourable reception from them. The New Zealand Hunts Association, when it appeared before us, also received the idea with some degree of favour. .Subsequent to the conclusion of our public sittings, the President wrote to us agreeing that, in the event of no further permits being granted, those clubs holding permits should help the affiliated clubs not so privileged. The association considered that hunts now holding permits should be allowed to retain sufficient income to enable them to carry on as at present, but that a percentage levy should be ma'de upon surplus income to provide the money needed by the non-totalizator clubs. That being done, it was suggested that each totalizator club, after contributing the amount levied upon it, should retain the remainder of its profits as a reserve fund. It was proposed that distribution of funds should be made through the Hunts Association. 327. The weakness of the association's proposal lies in the suggestion that each club should retain sufficient income to carry on as at present. Such a proposal would be advantageous to any club, if any such exists, which is carrying on upon a lavish scale. That any club should be unduly affluent merely in virtue of its situation is inequitable, and the inequity is emphasized by the fact that the more affluent clubs are those near populous centres where restraint from pilgrimage to the towns is less necessary than it is in districts more intensively rural in
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