The days before budget night were usually a good time to invest in a slab of beer, a bottle of Scotch - and as many cigarettes as your wallet could manage. In tough times a hike in the prices of " sin " articles was an almost certainty !
The other " sin " was anything to do with gambling, but that was harder to tax more heavily. Way back in the Neville Wran era the government deleted horse racing dividends ending in five cents. Such dividends were rounded down to the nearest whole number - and the government pocketed the missing five cents from such transactions.
More recently the state government introduced a new time frame on TAB and lottery winning dividends. A winner must now collect within twelve months of that win - or the hand of the treasurer scoops the pool and the funds end up in " consolidated revenue ".
There is another " win for the government " that is carefully shaded from public view.
That is the number of uncollected TAB bets and the number of successful Lotto, Lottery and " Scratchie " wins that are never presented for collection.
It stands to reason that many lottery tickets are given as birthday gifts, often to people in other states - while bets made in pubs by inebriated people often end up going through washing machines or discarded without checking race results.
It would be interesting to know the value of this government bonanza - but that seems to be as well guarded as any major state secret.
The interesting thing is that it is in addition to the declared state profit from gambling revenue - and this is the " cash cow " the government is planning to sell !
Obviously the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing !
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