
Last month Creative NZ warned it may have to cut arts funding because of a drop in Lotto sales which begs the question, should our culture be tied to gambling?
Current Lotto Advertising has a solo father buying a pirate ship for his son and sailing around the world – should funding for our arts culture be dependent on the lucrative desperate solo parent dream market?
The Arts and Culture Minister, Maggie Barry says that it only needs a couple of big jackpot prizes to attract Lotto punters back and “the balls might just roll our way”. Which effectively means that if Actors want more money for the Arts, then they may as well buy a Lotto ticket and cross their fingers.
How charming.
Culture is expression of the human experience. It shapes us, creates us, represents us, reflects us and challenges us. A society that ignores a well funded culture and sees it as merely a cost isn’t a society worthy of being a member of.
Relying on Lotto super draws to fund our arts would be funny if it weren’t so sad. It will be interesting if National deal with this in the budget.


The arts should be on a similar footing to sports
Gambling, another parasitic enterprise that transfers money to its controllers with a few happy winners.
Arts, transfers money to its providers, gives enjoyment to participants & viewers, you can’t eat it & it won’t keep you warm so a miserable person might claim there is an economic case not to support it however that neglects that society needs more than money to live satisfied lives. I would suspect that sport & the arts have taken the place of religion in our more secular society today.
How about we use lotto profits to pay for 5 eyes and politicians salaries?
Might give them all a dose of reality and they can learn to live within their budgets, ha ha.
Maggie Maggie magpie garden girl
Swirling in her power hungry world
Let the arts wait until a big lotto win
No funding for the arts with her smirky grin
We have bigger guns to buy and a huge military to fund etc. . . . .
Our priorities do not include many healthy and creative ventures.
Kids now only have about 1/2 hour a week for art classes.
This govt. should properly fund the arts but that is very low on their priority list.
Maggie Maggie sad elitist little girl – our Arts and Culture Minister
and who pays and who suffers with her at the helm ?
The Arts and our Culture and our kids pay the price.
Maggie, why don’t you buy a truck load of lotto tickets ? ? ?
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