I thought of writing to you when the woman in Grace Bros made her third attempt at getting the right box for the champagne glasses. Instead of taking the glasses to the room where the keep the empty boxes, she scurried back and forth selecting a box, unsuccessfully trying to pack the glasses in it, and going back for another try. Fred Hilmer, the oracle of efficiency would be interested in this, I thought. And as the glasses were for a prize for the squash raffle, I thought the IC might as well get a earful, too.
It was my turn to do the raffle … buy the prizes, sell the tickets on squash night, reimburse myself and hand over the profit to the treasurer.
Now you lot think you have turned over every stone in Australian society … culling inefficiency out of state government electricity generation; blowing the chill wind of competition through idle port authorities; rounding up slackness in government hospitals; sticking the needle into cosy lawyers’ and real-estate-agents’ monopolies; scything through unnecessarily detailed regulation … but you ain’t seen nothing as inefficient as raising 50 bucks in a raffle at ACT Masters Squash.
Try applying a little accrual accounting to my effort last week. Drive to Grace Bros emitting 23.4 kilograms of greenhouse gases; wear out 0.001 per cent of life of three escalators looking for champagne glasses; break stiletto heel of shop assistant as she gets fourth box; replace lipstick of shop assistant as she bites and rubs her lips saying something like: “”Oh dash, I think I have got the wrong box again”; add interest on purchase as my Visa card is in the red; plus another 23.4 kilograms of greenhouse gases driving home; allow for opportunity cost of $150 an hour because I could have been stringing for a foreign newspaper or changing the tap washers instead of getting a plumber in (make that $200 an hour); two raffle books; and one plastic bag to collect money.
I sold 144 tickets (at $2 for three or $1 for one). Less receipted costs on a strictly non-accrual basis, I made what the club laughingly calls a net profit of $49.
Then there is the emotional cost. When you sell raffle tickets you have to put people’s names on the tickets. Now I can remember someone’s face; that he works in the Department of Community Health; that his mother had her little toe amputated and he drives a Mitsubishi ute. But you can’t write all of that on a raffle ticket. I should know his name, and he knows I should know because he knows mine. Worse, he is not going to help me out by offering to write his own name in the raffle book. Acute social embarrassment follows.
So what are you lot going to do about the great economic and social costs of the quasi-compulsory inefficient fund-raising efforts of charities and clubs?
Normally, you recommend simplification of the law. Hear, hear. The ACT has half a dozen Acts dealing with gaming.
Incidentally, my legal opinion, for what it’s worth (a damn sight more than can be raised in a squash raffle), is that the common practice of offering people three tickets for $2 or one ticket for $1 converts a lawful raffle into an illegal game. (See Lotteries Act Section 6 (2)(c) and Unlawful Games Act Section 3.) It is also illegal to cut through the Grace Bros nonsense and have cash prizes.
The gaming laws are full of this sort of daft detail. The aims are clear. Charity and work raffles are okay. Profit-making gambling is out. The trouble is courts can no longer be trusted to deal with simple laws relying on the meanings of ordinary language because they get beguiled by artful lawyers. So we have long definitions of “”exempt”, “”private” and “”approved” lotteries, with the result that I engaged in an illegal raffle last week, as well as an expensive, inefficient, time-consuming, socially embarrassing fiasco.
So please, Fred and various commissioners, put an end to this misery. I know you hate regulation. So why not wipe out all present gaming restrictions and make it illegal to engage in any raffle that costs more to run than money it actually raises (see, for example, Adam Smith’s Fourth Law of Taxation in the Wealth of Nations). In the meantime, when I’m next on raffle duty, I think I’ll just hand over the 50 bucks in cash.