Carol Altmann – The Terrier

It’s fascinating to see the conversations that go on behind the scenes between the powerful, like an exchange between the former CEO of the Warrnambool City Council, Bruce Anson, and the former CEO of the Warrnambool Racing Club, Peter Downs.

It is a brief exchange – and released only through Freedom of Information of course – but it says so much.

It reveals that Mr Downs met with Mr Anson on Thursday 8 February 2018 with a problem.

The problem was that racehorse training along a section of Port Fairy’s East Beach was no longer possible because, wait for it, those pesky Hooded Plovers had turned up and made it “unworkable” for the racehorses.

But Mr Downs had an idea, which he put to Mr Anson in writing after their catch up: what about giving permission for 50 racehorses to use Lady Bay from Monday 12 February, from dawn until 8am?

Under the council rules, racehorse training at Lady Bay did not normally start until 1 March.

There is a very good reason for this, as Mr Downs acknowledges:  “We understand that there are other beach users using this area at this season of the year”.

(That season of the year is called summer and funnily enough there are loads of “beach users” who like to use Warrnambool’s main beach in summer.)

Not only did Mr Downs think having 50 racehorses training on Lady Bay in summer was a great idea, he also hoped the council could make it happen with just four days’ turnaround from his meeting with Mr Anson.

How? Well, “a circular resolution via email” to councillors.

Excuse me?

No meeting of councillors? No discussion with the public? Not even a notice in the Saturday newspaper?

Was Mr Downs seriously suggesting the council could change the rules by flicking an email around to councillors for a “yes” or a “no”?

You would expect Mr Anson, as CEO, to have clutched his belly, laughed out loud and spluttered “Don’t be so bloody ridiculous Peter!”

But no.

Mr Anson got straight on to it, to see if it could be done.

Within 24 hours Mr Anson had replied to Mr Downs, having done something that the council should have done when the WRC also wanted to access Levy’s Beach for racehorse training – he checked the council laws.

Lo and behold, it is illegal under local laws to bend the rules around racehorse training at Lady Bay without consulting the public.

Who would have thought? Fancy not being able to change a local law via Snapchat or WhatsApp, how inconvenient.

“Sorry I cannot assist in this instance,” Mr Anson wrote in his reply to Mr Downs via his ipad.

In this instance.

Ah, the power of three little words.

Mr Anson is no longer CEO, but the councillors are due to vote again on large-scale racehorse training at Levy’s Beach/Spooky’s Beach which, you may recall, was also found to be illegal under council laws and saw the Planning Minister step in to make it legal.

A sunset clause on the whole mess lapsed on 30 November last year, so each councillor will once again have to decide where they stand on the issue which continues to divide the community.

The first council meeting of the year is next Monday…and the election is in October.

Stay tuned.

The story would not have been possible without a grant from the Walkley Foundation Public Fund which supports investigative journalism.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

I have written a lot about racehorses this week, and for good reason, but there is one big question which still hasn’t been fully explored by the community: do we want to see Lady Bay become a permanent racehorse training facility?

Somehow this important question has been lost, despite the racing industry slowly and steadily claiming a bigger and bigger footprint on what is our main public beach.

That footprint is about to become permanent*.

Plans are afoot to build a $520,000 extension to the Pavilion carpark that will see an extra 33 carparks, plus another nine, double-length carparks for horse floats and long vehicles, plus a $100,000 wash-down facility for racehorses, all on what is Crown Land.

The Warrnambool City Council plans to spend $220,000 on this carpark/washdown set up and the Warrnambool Racing Club will contribute $400,000: more than half a million dollars in total.

Make no mistake, no club agrees to spend $400,000 without some sense of long-term security.

This means even more bitumen and concrete at Lady Bay over what is now sand and vegetation.

And it comes at a time when our animal species are dying out at an unprecedented rate which, even if you are not a soy-latte-sipping-snowflake-leftie-rabid-vegan-terrorist-activist-greenie (or whatever else is the insult these days), has to be of concern.

The carpark is being funded as a priority under the Warrnambool Harbour Masterplan and will be used exclusively by the racing club in the mornings.

“The car park would be available for horse-on-beach activities during morning periods and would be the area designated for that use,” says council spokesman Nick Higgins.

“It is this aspect that has triggered their (WRC’s financial) contribution.”

As to how long this agreement is for and what else will be funded in the future, that is all still under negotiation as part of the bigger plan to have racehorses training at Lady Bay and Levy’s Beach.

Which comes back around to the question: do we want our public beaches to become a permanent racehorse training facility?

We need to have this debate, because once the carpark is there, it isn’t moving.

It is a question which troubles a lot of people.

This includes the people who want to support local trainers, or love racehorses, or love watching horses swimming at Lady Bay – or maybe all three – but don’t want to see Lady Bay, or Levy’s Beach, turned into an extension of the racecourse.

These people just want to be able to walk on the beach, at any time of day, without worrying.

And they do worry, because when you mix large numbers of highly-spirited racehorses with the public, dangerous things happen.

Like last Thursday, the day of the Grand Annual Steeplechase, when a skittish racehorse being led into the water broke away from its handler and bolted down the beach.

A member of the public walking his dog had the foresight to raise his arms high and managed to stop the horse from belting further toward the surf club.

A couple of weeks ago, a similar thing happened: a racehorse cut loose and took off across the carpark toward the breakwater.

No wonder those who walk along the beach in the morning, do so with eyes in the back of their heads.

As one woman who walks most mornings said to me today, she is astonished the horses are allowed to run the length of the beach, all the way to the surf club.

“On the days when there are no racehorses at Lady Bay, it is just so peaceful and I was amazed at how different it felt, psychologically, to not have to worry.”

This woman is among those who have felt genuinely nervous as a clutch of racehorses have galloped past – “like they are in a race”.

And yet this woman, like so many other beach users I have spoken to about this issue, feels torn.

She can see the beauty in horses swimming. She finds most of the riders friendly and has no problem with people enjoying horse racing as a sport, but racehorses taking over a public beach? That is a bridge too far.

“If I had a choice, though, I would rather see them stay at Lady Bay than go to Levy’s Point, because the environment out there is even more important,” she says.

So this is the terrible choice that we have been given: do you wish to sacrifice this beach or that beach?

I can’t disclose this woman’s name, but I can assure you – if it helps to underscore the point – that she is not a soy-latte-sipping-snowflake-leftie-rabid-vegan-terrorist-activist-greenie.

She is just an everyday Warrnamboolian, worried about what is happening to our beaches at a time when we need, more than ever, to be protecting our natural spaces.

She is not alone.

* If there was any doubt about the deal being done here, you can refer back to a report in the minutes of the 1 Oct 2018 council meeting on p330: “The process has also given Council the opportunity to negotiate a reduction in horse numbers on Lady Bay and to require the Warrnambool Racing Club (WRC) to make a funding contribution towards the construction of a new bespoke car park for horse training adjoining the existing car park at the Pavilion.”

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Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Now this is some serious clout: top-gun academic Dr John Sherwood, from Deakin University, is preparing a report on the Levy’s Beach area which has been earmarked for large-scale racehorse training.

Dr Sherwood, a member of the State Government’s new Marine and Coastal Council and the 2017 Warrnambool City Council Citizen of the Year, has been keeping a quiet eye on the plan to allow up to 160 racehorses a day into what is part of the Belfast Coastal Reserve.

Dr Sherwood is now looking closely into the so-called “Hoon Hill” area, which has been woefully under-researched in terms of its potential environmental and cultural importance.

Respected local ecologist Jodie Honan is also preparing a report on the plants and animals in the area, because – once again – we don’t really know what is there.

Despite this gaping hole in the data, the Warrnambool City Council and State Government intend to allow up to 120 racehorses a day on the beach and 40 a day on the dunes, five days a week, from November.

As you do…in a coastal reserve.

Both reports have been commissioned by the Belfast Coastal Reserve Action Group which, as we know, has been fighting commercial racehorse training on beaches for almost four years now.

Dr Sherwood entering this issue is, to me, monumental because he comes with decades of experience and a tonne of respect.

His most recent work, in case you have been hiding in a cupboard, gained international attention after it raised the possibility of humans living at Moyjil/Point Richie in Warrnambool up to 120,000 years ago – 50,000 years longer than previously thought.

I will be fascinated to see his and Jodie’s reports.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

An urgent meeting will be held by the W’bool City Council this Friday (21/12) to allow large-scale racehorse training at Levy’s Beach, starting almost immediately.

Planning Minister Richard Wynne, as predicted, has intervened and asked for interim changes to the local planning laws – the same laws that found racehorse training was illegal in this section of the Belfast Coastal Reserve.

The council is now classing the matter as so “urgent and extraordinary” that a special meeting will be held on the last day before the holiday break to endorse this decision.

Not a word of this was raised in public last night (17/12), when the council held a meeting to talk about waste management and new signs at the entrance to the city.

Once that meeting finished, however, the real fireworks began with councillors called to a confidential “briefing” where they were given details of Mr Wynne’s intervention.

All of this in the last week before Christmas, when everybody is distracted and busy. But, of course, that is precisely the point.

Governments of all persuasions know the best time to bury controversial decisions is around the biggest holidays of the year.

What a gift to the racing industry. What a slap – again – to our precious environment.

Those councillors who vote for this on Friday night and call themselves environmentalists are a bit like self-declared vegetarians who eat meat once a week.

You can’t, pardon the pun, have a bet each way.

You either stand for the environment, and the endangered species and fragile dune system at Levy’s Beach, or you don’t.

To pretend this is some sort of “compromise” is simply a cop-out. Parks Victoria don’t want this. The majority of people who responded to the management report for the reserve don’t want this. Racing people who love the environment don’t want this (Clare Lindop, I am looking at you x)

The only people who want this are a handful of wealthy, well-connected, well-resourced trainers who stand to make a lot of money from brutalising our beach.

I am going to be there on Friday night, just to witness the capitulation, because that is exactly what it will be.

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