Lotto lets Australians dream of the high life (News Feature)

Sydney - Fridge repairer John Small and his Sydney clan will gather Tuesday to see who has a lucky ticket in Australia's richest ever lottery draw. 'Even 100,000 dollars would make a difference - money off the mortgage, money in the bank, money to take away your money worries,' he said. Right at the other end of the income scale is company director and former Melbourne lord mayor Ron Walker. He has no money worries himself, but winning the first-division prize of 100 million Australian dollar (81 million US dollars) would fuel a philanthropy binge that would gladden many hearts. Half of Australia's 10 million adults are expected to be clutching lottery tickets when the seven lucky numbers are drawn on primetime national television, a spokesman for Oz Lotto said. Newsagents' shops reported pushing and shoving in queues for last-gasp lottery ticket buys. In the 80-person hamlet of Marla on the South Australia-Northern Territory border, almost everyone is expected to be at the pub to witness the big draw. 'Everyone wants to win it and retire,' Marla Travellers Rest manager Brian Carrick told the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper. 'We had one guy buy 600 dollars' worth of maxi tickets.' Australians are the world's biggest gamblers in per capita terms. Most of the money - 80 per cent - is fed into poker machines in pubs and clubs. There are 200,000 poker machines, about 20 per cent of the world's total, and the average family spends more on gambling than it does on clothes. 'Australians themselves say it's out of control, it's ridiculous,' said anti-gambling campaigner Tim Costello. He blames state governments for becoming hooked on gambling revenue. While the winner of the Lotto draw will get 100 million Australian dollars or, at least, a share of it, the state governments will clear around 30 per cent of what's spent on tickets. Father Chris Riley, who looks after street kids in Sydney, urges the state governments not to pocket their windfall from the Lotto spurge. 'That money needs to go back into the community where it came from,' Riley said. 'They should target the charities that deal with the gambling and the effects on their families or just use it to help the charities that are struggling.' Statistician John Croucher from Sydney's Macquarie University reckons that ticket holders manage to put aside the reality that they have only a one in 45 million chance of getting lucky. To improve these near impossible chances, they buy more tickets, make a bigger commitment, and just hope it will be their day. Statisticians like Croucher have fun working out the odds for a ticket holder to emulate the success of David Taylor, who won 10 million Australian dollars when his Oz Lotto numbers came up in 1998. Statistician David Warton reckons that if you bought a ticket 24 hours before the barrel turns, you would be more likely to die before the draw than win it. Be careful what you wish for, warns 1998 winner Taylor. He lost most of his windfall in dud investments, was cheated by neighbours and preyed upon by strangers. Taylor said he wishes he had never bought a lottery ticket.