Carol Altmann – The Terrier

News today about the ructions within the local Liberal Party branch was interesting on all sorts of levels, including the fact it exposes – yet again – the thick ties between the Warrnambool City Council and the Warrnambool Racing Club.

Let’s check the count so far. If you have been reading The Terrier:

Cr  Kylie Gatson: We already know that Cr Kylie Gaston ran for the Labor Party at the last state election and Labor Racing Minister Martin Pakula was the main force behind ensuring the Warrnambool Racing Club got what it wanted from the council in accessing Levy’s beach for large-scale racehorse training

Cr Peter Hulin: We already know that Cr Hulin, who supports the Levy’s move, was a former Liberal Party member but handed out how-to-vote cards at the last state election for former MP and racehorse owner James Purcell, whose son, Aaron, is a local racehorse trainer.

Cr Sue Cassidy: We already know Cr Cassidy, who supports the Levy’s move, is married to David Cassidy who operates sign company, Cassign, that sponsors races at the Warrnambool Racing Club. Liberal Party member Peter Herbert, the mayor’s brother, is a mate of David’s and not very happy about the “plover lovers” – as he likes to call them – who are opposed to racehorse training at Levy’s because the endangered Hooded Plover nests there.

Mayor Tony Herbert: We already know Cr Herbert, who supports the Levy’s plan, chairs the council’s Visitor Economy Advisory Committee that includes Warrnambool Racing Club CEO Peter Downs.

And now, in today’s story, we have Mayor Herbert also turning up as a rusted-on member of the Liberal Party where the chairman of the Warrnambool Racing Club, Nick Rule, is a significant player.

Mr Rule owns a racehorse with Federal Liberal MP Dan Tehan.

In his maiden speech in Federal Parliament, Mr Tehan thanked Mr Rule for being part of the Liberal fundraising team that saw him elected to the seat of Wannon.

Now Mr Rule, as chairman of the Warrnambool Racing Club, has to deal directly with the council – and Mayor Herbert in particular – to get the approvals that are still required to allow racehorse training at Levy’s Beach.

The fact they already share a connection, through the local Liberal Party branch, might explain the letter sent by Mr Rule to the Mayor on January 16 this year.

This was an important letter.

It was asking the council to provide consent for the racehorse training and assurances to the Environment Minister that this was in line with all coastal and marine management plans and policies.

It also asked for the council executive staff to be given the power to issue training licences.

These were both “critical” requirements, Mr Rule said.

Despite the importance of this letter, Mr Rule didn’t even bother to sign it or put it on Warrnambool Racing Club letterhead.

It arrived, unsigned, from Hammonds Paints, where he is managing director.

“Hi Tony…..As per our discussion earlier today…..

Kind regards, Nick.”

There is such a lack of formality, such an expectation of being heard without having to be all official about it, that all that is missing is “maaaaaatttteeeee”. (You can see the full letter here).

Lo and behold, the letter was tabled and dealt with by the council just 17 days after it arrived. (By contrast, the residents in south Banyan St lobbying to have street trees planted have been waiting about four years.)

The same fast-tracking happened last December.

Mr Rule wrote a letter to Mr Herbert on December 10 – this time it was signed and on WRC letterhead – saying the club had asked the Planning Minister to change the planning rules so racehorses could train at Levy’s. If the change went ahead, the club wanted the council’s support as well, the letter said.

“This is a matter of great urgency,” Mr Rule wrote.

No problem! Kazaam!

The council called a special meeting and gave almost unanimous support (vote: 6/1) on December 21 – just 11 days later.

I remember, in 2014, I needed council permission to place a scissor lift and five witches hats near the Robert Ullman whale mural, in East Warrnambool, which was being restored over a weekend.

The little permit took more than a fortnight to be processed.

Like the people waiting for their street trees in Banyan St, I obviously don’t have the right connections.

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By Carol Altmann

The full power of the horse racing industry in Victoria has been laid bare.

In 118 pages, the Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan released this week ties itself in knots to justify the unjustifiable: allowing full-scale racehorse training along one of the few, accessible wild beaches in our area.

At no time, unlike with the dirt-bike riders or off-road drivers, did the State Government consider banning racehorse training on the stretch of beach between east Killarney and Levy’s Beach, which is home to a breathtaking array of endangered birdlife and indigenous cultural heritage.

No, from day one, it has been a case of the government working out how to accommodate racehorses, as if they have been on our beaches for thousands of years and have wings and feathers, or gills and scales.

Let’s do the maths on what is now going to happen:

Up to 40 racehorses a day, five days a week, all year round, will be allowed to train on ‘Hoon Hill’, a long sand dune area west of Levy’s Beach. This equals up to 200 horses a week.

Up to 120 horses a day can train on Levy’s Beach foreshore, five days a week, all year round. This equals up to 600 horses a week.

This means up to 800 horses a month will be running up the dunes and 2400 running along the beach.

In one year, this is the equivalent of up to 9600 horses on the dunes and 28,800 on the beach.

In two years time, when the government plans to assess the impact, there will have been – potentially – a combined total of 76,800 horse movements along Levy’s Beach and up the dunes at Hoon Hill.

Up to 76,800 horse movements in just two years of a 15-year plan.

Will it have an impact on the beach? Hmm, let me think about that for one nano second.

This entire “problem” of what to do about professional racehorse trainers has been created by the sheer power of an industry that has huge clout well beyond our little patch in south-west Victoria.

You only have to see the cosying up that goes on between politicians and the Victorian Racing Club.

Free passes. Memberships. Tickets to the Cup. Heck, some of them even own racehorses themselves, like our local MPs Dan Tehan and James Purcell who, in an Orwellian twist, receives lavish praise for looking after his own interests and that of his son, Aaron, a professional racehorse trainer.

And if anyone dares to mention that racehorses can be trained in purpose-built facilities, that they don’t actually need to be trained on our wild beaches, they are whacked with a thinly-veiled form of blackmail: the trainers will go “elsewhere” (although I am not sure where “elsewhere” is), all the jobs will dry up and the local racing industry will collapse.

What a load of bullshite.

The Warrnambool Racing Club would not be investing millions into the Warrnambool racecourse if its whole survival depended on continued access to a stretch of coastline.

Let’s not forget that these professional racehorse trainers just started showing up at Levy’s one day, using the beach without permits or permission, and when one of those horses won a Melbourne Cup in 2015, they began to arrive by the truckload.

But instead of telling these trainers to pack up and leave a coastal reserve, it was decided there was no option but to bend the rules around them. Not only that, carparks and tracks will now be added to give them better access!

The motorcross riders and off-road drivers must be feeling hard done by.

They have been tearing around the dunes at Levy’s Beach for years and – quite rightly – have been given notice that they will no longer be tolerated.

So as one form of horsepower moves out, another much stronger horsepower is moving in.

Don’t be fooled for one second by the romantic images of horses wading into the surf to soothe their weary muscles, or swimming gently behind a row boat as they swim out their strains. They can do that now at Lady Bay.

This is not horse riding, this is racehorse training, on a massive scale.

This is about conditioning, this is about pace and strength: the hard, powerful stuff, up dunes and down dunes and along long stretches of beach, dodging the walkers and birdwatchers and startled birds, and squashing the starfish and worms and bugs and shellfish and little pids and pods that make up the full and brilliant ecosystem of a wild coastline.

It makes me want to weep, this sort of destruction, all for no other reason than convenience, ease and greed.

And nobody else, nobody, but the powerful racing industry would ever get away with it.

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I have tried at least five times to stop writing about local issues so that I can focus on books that I need to write, but each time I try, some frustrated soul contacts me with a story idea or a piece of information that they know will not be investigated or published elsewhere.

So here we go.

Story number one: Dan Tehan’s friends in racing.

A week or so ago, Wannon MP Dan Tehan braved the chill winds at the Warrnambool racecourse to announce a sweet $1.25 million in funds to the Warrnambool Racing Club so it could transform, among other things, its already “first-class” eating and drinking venue into a “world-class” venue.

That little slice of pumped up Trump-speak was from WRC chairman Nick Rule, who told the local paper back in January that: “The club has the support from the Member for Wannon Dan Tehan for the project” aka, he is right behind us on this one.

Dan is a big fan of racing, but more than that, he owns shares in racehorses and, in particular, he owns shares in a racehorse – called Wells – with Nick Rule and others.

That’s right: our local Federal MP shares a horse with the chairman of the WRC and lobbies on behalf of the WRC for public money.

What I don’t understand is why this connection is never mentioned in any media reports?

And why doesn’t Dan Tehan ever mention it in any of his public remarks and Facebook posts?

And why, if it is no big deal, does his staff refuse to answer a simple “yes” when asked if Dan and Nick co-own a racehorse?

It was the same story a few years ago when Dan Tehan and then Premier Denis Napthine part-owned a racehorse (Spin the Bottle) with Midfield Meats owner and multi-millionaire Colin McKenna who, at the time, was seeking state money to expand his operations in Warrnambool. (He got the money and Denis got a political headache.)

And it is the same story, as I have written about before, every time local MP James Purcell, racehorse owner and father-of-trainer-Aaron Purcell, opens his mouth about anything to do with horse racing and allowing large numbers of racehorses to train on beaches.

Let me shout it out:

THESE MPS OWN RACEHORSES!

Dan Tehan and James Purcell are not alone. State ministers Lily D’Ambrosio and Martin Pakula, who are among those deciding whether commercial racehorse training should be allowed on our local beaches, have been the recipients of a free annual pass or a VIP pass to Racing Victoria.

Ah, the lure of a ringside seat at the Melbourne Cup.

I am not sure when we started to accept such potential conflicts of interest as normal.

It is difficult to think of another example where an MP would be permitted to be actively involved in any lobbying or decision making when they held such interests but, for some reason, horse racing remains exempt.

I hasten to add, before the lawyers start dictating letters, that there is no suggestion of any impropriety by any of these MPs: they are doing what we allow them to do.

If this is to change, we need to keep calling it out and to keep shining the light into the dim corners, sometimes several times over.

And that is story number one.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

One of the many things that struck me while working through the plan to allow commercial racehorse training on our wild beaches is that all three of our local MPs – Dan Tehan, James Purcell and Roma Britnell – have strong ties to horse racing.

Federal MP Dan Tehan, although his office was oddly reluctant to make this clear, shares a very successful racehorse with the CEO of the Warrnambool Racing Club, Nick Rule, among others.

Independent MP James Purcell has an interest in numerous racehorses and his son is a professional trainer.

State Liberal MP Roma Britnell, who as far as I know doesn’t own a racehorse, has a horse race named in her honour and holds a Warrnambool Racing Club membership.

Which of our local MPs, then, will argue that our beaches should not be used for racehorse training on an industrial scale?

Which of them will lobby to instead increase protection of the Belfast Coastal Reserve?

None of them.

Instead, all three of our local MPs have started from the point that we need to reach a “compromise”, a “balance”, a “give-and-take” on having thoroughbred racehorses pounding along sections of beach between Killarney and Warrnambool and up and down the dunes at Levy’s Point.

Not one of them has said that large numbers of racehorses should not be in a coastal reserve in the first place.

At least Roma Britnell, in an email to me via her media advisor Jarrod Woolley, said she had “a number of concerns” about the draft management plan for the reserve.

When I asked what those concerns actually were, however, there was no more information forthcoming.

This is why documents released to the Belfast Coastal Reserve Action Group under Freedom of Information make for such a revealing – and depressing – read.

They spell out that commercial, large-scale racehorse training in the Belfast Coastal Reserve is virtually a fait accompli.

The correspondence between the various bodies involved in the draft plan never questions why racehorse training should be allowed, but how it will be managed.

At first I felt like giving up and not even bothering to write a submission. What was the point, the cards were already stacked, right?

But then it occurred to me that this is the very reason why other voices need to be heard, or those with the most power, the most access, and the most influence will simply roll right over the top with impunity.

We elect people to represent our views because we don’t have the time to wade through reports, but this time, I am sorry to say, those of us who want to see this reserve preserved are on our own.

So please make the effort, either by filling out the online survey or emailing a submission, via this link: www.engage.vic.gov.au/belfast 

By Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #A02F2F;”] T[/dropcap]he federal MP for Wannon, Dan Tehan, remains personally opposed to same sex marriage, despite growing support within his electorate for the move.

Two online polls in the past two years by the local newspaper, The Warrnambool Standard, reveal support for marriage equality in the south-west has grown from 57% in 2013 to 72% in 2015, reflecting a similar trend nationally, with a 2014 poll by Crosby-Textor showing 72% support.

And as revealed by Bluestone, the current incarnation of the Warrnambool City Council also contains a majority who support marriage equality, although it has not made a formal declaration, unlike more than a dozen municipalities around Australia who have voted to support the move.

Despite this shift, Mr Tehan has not moved from his position of being personally opposed to same sex marriage, while at the same time supporting a conscience vote on the issue which would allow MPs to vote based on their individual views, not party policy.

Mr Tehan emailed us this response in answer to our question as to whether growing support for marriage equality would change his views:

“The Government’s long standing position is that it supports the current definition of marriage contained in the Marriage Act 1961 (Cth), which states that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. 

However, I acknowledge that there is a diversity of views in the local community about this.

If the issue is to be addressed in this term of the Commonwealth Parliament, the question of a conscience vote will be considered by Government Members and Senators in the Coalition party room.

While I support the traditional definition of marriage, I also support this issue being dealt with as a matter of conscience.”

A cross party bill on same-sex marriage will be introduced when Federal Parliament resumes on August 11, which those in support of the change hope will lead to a vote on the issue.

The Liberal Party is expected to decide a week later, on August 18, whether it will allow a conscience vote so its members can vote against the party policy if they so choose.

Lobby group Australian Marriage Equality says its figures show only four more lower house MPs need to declare their support for marriage equality for there to be a majority, with the Senate showing a one-vote majority.

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