THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - IS THIS A CASE OF ONE BAD JUDGEMENT CALL AFTER ANOTHER?

By Graham Potter | Sunday, June 7, 2015

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily.

In a week that should have been a celebration of the highlight of horseracing in Queensland, the industry is reeling following the abolishment of, amongst others, the Queensland Thoroughbred Racing Board by Queensland’s Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

The thoroughbred board is for all intents and purposes is an innocent party in the government’s purge of racing’s administrators and I would suggest a reasonable case can be made that such an action was based on recommendations made outside of the scope of the MacSporran commission, whose original brief was for an investigation into the greyhound industry following the ‘live baiting’ scandal.

Even with the Commissioner’s powers expanded to cover ‘racing’ in general, because all three racing codes fell under one overseeing authority, it remains a mystery how any particular board that had nothing today with the particular scandal under scrutiny, or any other inconsistencies that might have been uncovered, can be ‘sacked’ in such unceremonious circumstances without leave for any recourse.

Now don’t misunderstand.

I’m not suggesting that everything was as good as it could be in the world of horse-racing. That is a state which will probably never be attained and there has been plenty of criticism of Racing Queensland, the ruling Body of all three codes, by a fair spread of horse-racing’s stakeholders.

But little of that was directed at the Thoroughbred Racing Board, in general, or its members, in particular.

It was Racing Queensland upper echelon of executives who were targeted and, sure, if they missed out on taking action on the horrendous greyhound ‘live baiting’ issue when the opportunity was offered to them the bulk of that criticism can be justified and punitive action is not out of order for those who were in a position to influence a better outcome.

But why the collateral damage at the expense of horse racing?

On March 1, under the headline, ‘Tri-code option a failure – let’s move on’, this column stated unambiguously that, ‘Putting three racing codes under one administrative banner was, and remains, a ludicrous idea. Each code has its own sets of demands and each should stand or fall on their own viability without letting the failing of one impact on the prosperity of another.’

The logic of that argument remains true today.

So why is it then is that one of the Commissioner’s recommendations calls for another all-encompassing, overseeing board to now take control of all three racing codes in place of the dismissed boards ... with four ‘independent board’ members having the collective veto on any decision.

Is it a case of bad judgement (the folly of abolishing innocent boards) being followed by a case of bad judgement (the failure to recognise and react appropriately to a clearly flawed operational model)?

As some still try to find some logic in the manic events of the week, much of what has occurred has been attributed to ‘pay-back politics’ a claim that the new Racing Minister has vehemently denied.

That claim is there because it has been hard to find any other logical argument to explain what has occurred.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the ‘Stradbroke Week Massacre’ has left horseracing in a precarious position.

Just where it goes from here is anyone’s guess.

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