Page 1046 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 17 March 2010
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There was a meeting at the Thoroughbred Park facility in February. It is disappointing that the only representatives of this place were from the Liberal Party. Indeed, the club, Thoroughbred Park, put out a press release the next day. I will just read out the first two paragraphs:
The Canberra Racing Club Committee has resolved to escalate the fight and mobilise its supporters in the battle for revenue that is the rightful entitlement of the ACT racing industry through the royalties generated from racing.
The ACT Government and the Minister for Gambling and Racing have failed to respond to the industry and enter negotiations to resolve the stand off. The Minister last met with the industry on 15 April 2009.
And that is the shame of this. We have actually got a minister who has the job to deal with the industry but has failed to do so. If the minister had been there on the night, he would have actually heard one of the speakers speak very strongly about their passion for the racing industry and speak very clearly about what the effect would be if these changes go ahead. I asked the gentleman who gave a short speech about his perception of what was happening. Louis Mihalyka was kind enough to put this down in writing. And it is worth reading it into the record. He talks about the meeting the previous night:
I felt last night was important enough to make the trip down from Sydney to learn more about the predicament in which Canberra racing is already, and to hear what the prognosis was.
Laurel Oak is a very good representation of ownership trends. We manage 30 to 40 horses at any one time along the eastern seaboard and have had horses in Canberra since 1987.
Through the mid 2000s we have increased the number of horses we had trained in Canberra. For many years we have been involved in Canberra racing with both Canberra-based and non Canberra-based owners, simply because Canberra racing has always been very enjoyable. Prize money has traditionally been better than NSW country prize money, so there was always an attraction, both social and financial, to have horses trained in Canberra, and to race in Canberra.
In 2008 we bought six new horses to be trained in Canberra. Last year that reduced to only one, but it was purely as a consequence of global financial circumstances as we were very conservative with our buying in all areas due to the uncertainty that the GFC caused. This year the world seems to be in a much healthier financial state again and with a greater enthusiasm for racing, and we have bought a record number of yearlings (for us)—
the company—
so far, which is only half way through the yearling buying season. So far none has been acquired for Canberra and at this stage, based on demand, the likelihood is that we will have, at most, one new yearling to be trained out of Canberra.
The diminishing attraction is simply due to the fact that horses hardly ever race in Canberra anymore. In days gone by if we chose to race horses in Canberra for
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