Page 2303 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2022
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Jobs have already been lost because of the virtue signalling that has gone on in this space, and the jobs of fair dinkum battlers will continue to be lost simply because the Greens have a vision of Australia which is entirely based around inner-city apartment living, riding bikes, saying virtuous things and, based on previous discussions in here, taking drugs. That is what their vision of the world is.
I have heard people in the racing game say, “All power to Labor for standing up to the Greens over the MOU. All power to Labor for standing up to them and signing that MOU.” But I just do not buy that position. Labor have signed this funding agreement knowing that at this level of funding there is no long-term future for the racing code here. They know it is not sufficient. And so, when it comes to the two progressive parties here, in terms of outcomes for the racing codes, you have got two choices: execution from the Greens or starvation from Labor. That is it. They are your two choices.
Members interjecting—
You can laugh all you want, Mr Barr, but those struggling battlers on a minimum wage who are dragging themselves out of bed at four in the morning to get to the race track, to do something that they love, for not much money, they are the ones who are suffering. Thoroughbred racing and harness racing are in diabolical strife here in the ACT. They are in strife because this government is starving both of them to death. The funding offerings through the MOU process are not sufficient to provide sustainability for these big employing, big economic-producing pursuits.
We will hear some grand statements from Mr Steel. Mr Steel is a smart man; he knows what is going on. I have seen his proposed amendments, which I will speak to in closing, but he knows that what I am saying is absolutely what is happening in this space. Every other jurisdiction in Australia recognises the value of their thoroughbred racing, their harness racing and their greyhound racing industries. In every other jurisdiction, the powers that be have gone out of their way to creatively provide a sustainable income for these sports—or, rather, they have set up a scenario under which those racing codes can fund themselves in the way that they always used to, and that is through funds that comes from people who are betting on those codes.
The history of this space is really important. I can see that Ms Clay does not quite have a full understanding of the history of the funding. In the good old days, funding for horseracing was pretty simple. A percentage of the betting turnover on those pursuits was funnelled back to the racing codes. This was made much easier by the fact that the various state governments owned the betting agencies and that online gaming simply did not exist. So it was very, very simple.
Things changed as we got into the thick of the century. Online betting became an actual thing as, one by one, the various states and territories offloaded their betting agencies. We sold ACTTAB in 2014 to Tabcorp. There was a big, multimillion-dollar price tag, an ongoing licence fee of a million dollars indexed to CPI. At the time, there was a little fellow by the name of Brendan Smyth who was the gaming and racing spokesman for the Canberra Liberals. Brendan stood in this place, and in the media, and said, “Hang on, hang on, hang on! Whoa!” He said, “Hang on just a moment.
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