Page 3096 - Week 09 - Thursday, 13 October 2022
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the public interest to fund this industry at all, but, in order to look after the workers and the animals, we are happy to phase it out rather than cut it off. The horseracing industry are now responsible. They must look after their workers and their animals. They cannot seek endless public money and ask the government to do it for them.
The horseracing industry have been on notice for over a decade that public funds will end. They have not become self-sufficient. In 2011 the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission said that the industry should be self-sufficient. The commission said that, if the horseracing industry is given public funds—if—it should be for a limited period of time. The horseracing industry have been given three five-year MOUs—15 years. This is incredibly generous. They have not used this time and this $100 million to become a self-sufficient industry. They have simply asked for more public funding and for endless public funding. Last year Thoroughbred Park’s total revenue was $12.5 million. They received an ACT government distribution of $6.6 million. They are half-funded by the ACT government.
Canberrans understand that we publicly fund schools, hospitals, housing and the environment, but why are we publicly funding a racecourse? How is this racecourse a public service? I understand that the industry is in distress. We have all read about workers compensation claims from accidents in training and on the track, we have read about liability insurance and premiums going up, we have read about the difficulty they are finding in making their business model pay, and we have read that they are finding it difficult to attract young people to join the industry, both as workers and as an audience. I understand that.
It looks like a transition period to me, and we are asking them to make a sensible transition. They should not and they will not get public funding forever. If enough people love watching horseracing then enough people will pay for it. If not, why is the ACT government paying for it? It is not the job of government to prop up a business model like this indefinitely.
Budget decisions are about priorities. They are about what is in the public interest and they are also about process. They are about transparency; they are about how we make those decisions. We usually make decisions like this in certain, specific ways. We do grants, we do procurements and we follow ordinary budget cycles. It is very unusual to do a series of five-year deals. It is extremely unusual to do a series of five-year deals that were not made public. At least this one now is public. These sorts of deals should be really well scrutinised and they also need to be really, really clear about the public benefit they are delivering. Public money is for the public benefit. What benefit is this?
We are hearing on a daily and weekly basis about all of the crises that we are dealing with. We know that we have a housing affordability crisis. We know that we have a climate crisis. We have declared these situations. We have a pandemic, and emergency procedures have been operating for a really long time. We have got all of these major problems and we need to spend our public money on these really pressing public interest matters. When did we declare that Canberra was suffering from a horseracing crisis?
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