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But there was a paradox in Kiddie’s accomplishments. The more successful a lottery was, the less chance he had of getting acceptance for further bigger and brighter lotteries needed to maintain this public enthusiasm. Political doors shut, metaphorically, and he was not helped either by uninterested bureaucrats who did not recommend bigger operations. Kiddie was knocked back three times through 1978 and early 1979 when he tried to capitalise on the success of ‘ Plus 5S’ by running an even larger lottery; He was impatient, but did have an ace up his sleeve. Adopting 1929 (erroneously) as the year in which national lotteries began, he eventually persuaded Highet that, in celebration of the half-century in October 1979, he be allowed to run two $3.1 million ‘Double Banger’ lotteries with a first prize of $750,000, the biggest in the country’s history;
There was a stampede for tickets, a current recession doing nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of punters, indeed adding a hint of desperation in the race to buy tickets. Mail orders for the $20 tickets far outweighed the supply. On the morning of i October queues began forming at 3 a.m. and hundreds missed out. There was no limit on how many tickets a customer could buy and scalpers sold tickets to those at the back of the queue for three times their face value. Most tickets were sold by mid-morning; all were gone by nightfall.
Yet for Kiddie, the moment was bitter-sweet. Driving around the booths to view the reaction he was horrified at the length of the queues and ashamed to see Japanese tourists photographing them with gesticulating glee. This was distressing for the patriotic Kiddie. Queues were ‘grubby’, akin to lining up for bread in a Third World country; and indicated to him an unhealthy desperation to win. His concern mounted as aggrieved would-be ticket buyers threatened his family and promised to break windows in his house. There was a strong element of irony in Kiddle’s reaction, of course. Historical precedent had always shown that the bigger lotteries he so keenly sought invariably aroused a frantic response from the public when they first opened.
The first Double Banger was drawn on Television One’s Ray Woolf Show on 9 November 1979. By then the second—the ‘Encore’—had also sold out in the same fever-pitch atmosphere, with some $5 million being spent in just three hours. Some shops had refused to take tickets for fear of disorder on their premises or because of the extra work involved. Even more people had missed out on tickets. The second Double Banger was the climax of an increase in gross lottery revenue from sio million to so million within six years, and the odds on winning a major prize were the best ever offered in a New Zealand lottery. But there was a nagging question as to whether and when the upward spiral was going to end. The Auckland Star questioned whether it was all good fun or depressing evidence of community avarice. ‘Certainly it seems incongruous in times when we are all supposed to be saving, in the interests of the country, to be encouraging any frivolous stab at big-scale wealth.’ Comparing the ready acceptance of large lotteries with the ‘hysterical’ outcry every time the legalising of casinos or poker machines was mentioned, another newspaper called for the government to stop being ‘two-faced’ about gambling.
The two Double Bangers were ‘one-offs’, but the ‘Pot 0’ Gold’s and ‘ Plus 5’s continued, as did the Golden Kiwi Jackpots, although these with their s6o,ooo first prizes were almost moribund in the wake of the more attractive specials. In 1981 Highet raised the first prize to $100,000. In the meantime, New Zealand Lotteries had run a $20-per-ticket ‘Sports Special’ lottery to help New Zealand sportspeople compete overseas. 250,000 tickets sold out in two days.
That success encouraged Kiddle to organise more one-off large-scale lotteries. In March 1983 total lottery sales since 1929 exceeded sioo million for the first time. As a reward, he was permitted to run a one-off lottery that offered no fewer than 41 cars as prizes. Another such lottery a month later also sold out within days, as did a third offering a total prize package Zealand’s Olympic team to Los Angeles. Replicating earlier rushes, New Zealanders reacted with unabashed delight to the new lottery; despite the sz price tag for tickets. In Auckland, queues stretched 400 metres before dawn, the keenest camping in doorways overnight. All tickets sold in seven hours. Agents who had reserved tickets for regular buyers faced hostility from others, and at least one Auckland agent asked a police officer to guard her ticket booth because she feared for her safety;
Prime Minister Robert Muldoon drew the winning marble on national television on 31 May and quipped gruffly that he would love to tax the winnings. The first prize went to a Christchurch couple, who managed to remain anonymous despite obsessive interest from the local media. Less reticent was the suburban stationer who had sold them the winning ticket. He received a bonus, publicity that this was not the first winning lottery ticket he had sold, and had his photograph splashed over the front pages. It was all very good for business.
The lottery made a profit of over si million, of which $300,000 went to the Olympians.
This si million lottery; and a second one which followed it in July, were equally popular and marked the high point for national lotteries of this type in New Zealand. Another one-off lottery run in June to mark the French rugby tour also did outstandingly well. These successes were due to a number of factors. Special-purpose lotteries appealed to both parochial and sporting interests. In addition, Allan Highet’s enthusiasm helped to smooth the bureaucratic path for their organising as never before. His political colleagues increasingly saw kudos in being identified with successful money-making operations and basked in reflected glory when profits were distributed to worthy causes. Lotteries, and the sports they supported, also helped to take people’s minds off the economic recession, and in some instances, this had the effect of increasing spending on them.
Significantly, in terms of the history of lotteries in New Zealand, opposition was by now sporadic and not widely reported. As participation in lotteries created its own cultural ethos within the wider society, moralistic opponents were marginalised to a crackpot fringe, akin to prohibitionists or doomsday prophets. Indeed, there had been a turn-around of attitude within many Protestant churches. The quasi-autonomous welfare arm of the Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Support Services Association, accepted lottery grants from the 1970s. In 1979 the General Assembly agreed that there was little harm in purchasing a raffle ticket to help a worthy cause, and the same body decided three years later that the use of lottery funds ‘did not conflict with the church’s traditional and current position on gambling and could be agreed to’. For traditionalists, this was heresy. Rutherford Waddell, Agnes Macalister and J. J. North would have turned in their graves.
Above all, Highet and KiddIe were salesmen. Between the two of them they kept lotteries very much in the public eye. Prizes were large, publicity keen and profits ever-rising. With a quarter of a million New Zealanders buying tickets every week, the overseas lottery ‘bogey’ had been well and truly laid to rest. The third si million lottery, held in February 1985 and offering a total of $3.85 million in prizes, sold well, if not as spectacularly as its predecessors. This indication of a fall in demand, however slight, rekindled KiddIe’s fears about the future. He recognised that the appeal of the traditional draw lottery would lessen over time. Lottery promoters overseas had introduced instant-prize lotteries, even in Third World countries where the illiterate recognised animal and bird symbols on scratch cards. But KiddIe was in a catch-n position. To keep his job he had to ensure his draw lotteries continued to be winners, and because of .his successes the government was not interested in making the radical change to instant-prize lotteries in which, he believed, the returns would be much greater.2’ The system for distributing profits remained stable during Kiddle’s tenure. The structure of the Board of Control and its various specialist committees had been unchanged since 1962. There were new personnel, of course, and a change of name to the New Zealand Lottery Board in 1978. The stability of the structure reflected its effectiveness in meeting its own needs and the government’s requirements. Between 1973-74 and 1979-80, lottery revenue increased five-fold from sio million to $50 million, with more than 20 percent of this being disbursed for charitable purposes. There was a minor slump in 1980-81, but the million-dollar lotteries and increase in Golden Kiwi prizes between 1982 and 1984 led to profits rising again. In 1982-83 a record $18 million was distributed to the arts, sports, recreation, welfare, community activities and medical/scientific research. As already mentioned, that year also saw $100 million being raised in sales from the New Zealand national lottery. It had taken o years to reach the first $50 million; the second had come in just over three. It was a remarkable transformation. But if profits kept rising, so did demand for them. A few large recipients soaked up much of the pool. These included the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, the New Zealand Film Commission, the Sports Foundation, and other national and provincial sports bodies, which received a fixed amount each year. All the Lottery Board’s committees were hard- pressed to keep up with their commitments. In 1984 the youth and recreacommittee allocated $566,000—but 473 applicants had sought more than s million. The welfare committee had received requests totalling more than $6.25 million, three times what was available. It was clear that unless profits continued to increase many programmes would be placed in jeopardy. Furthermore, once an organisation had received a life-saving injection of lottery profits, it was difficult not to give it further doses for fear that it might not survive. Such on-going responsibilities effectively reduced the pool of funds available for distribution to worthy new applicants with innovative programmes.
