Carol Altmann – The Terrier

We call ourselves Australia’s most liveable city, but this is still happening to our coast.

Two years after a long, expensive and detailed plan was put in place to look after the wild terrain of Levy’s Beach, it’s still being trashed.

The illegal four wheel-driving still goes on.

Illegal rubbish dumping still goes on.

The illegal trail bike riding still goes on.

And there is still no answer from the Warrnambool City Council as to whether racehorse training will be allowed, because most councillors are paralysed with fear of making this an issue at the next election and more importantly, pissing off the powerful Warrnambool Racing Club.

Tip: it already is an election issue.

Another tip: with Weir and McLean now pre-occupied preparing their defence for serious charges of animal cruelty against racehorses, the other 99 per cent of the trainers have moved on and are content with Lady Bay.

When it comes to Levy’s beach and our part of the Belfast Coastal Reserve, the council is incapable of making a decision and it is incapable of managing the area.

It has utterly failed and, this time, it cannot claim it didn’t know what was happening “out there”.

They know what is happening and the best they can do is launch yet another bloody survey.

Another survey, for another plan.

Please, not another plan.

We already have a Warrnambool Coastal Management Plan 2013, a Green Warrnambool 2018 plan, a Warrnambool Coastal Vegetation Management Plan 2012, a Management Plan for the Levy’s Point Coastal Reserve from 1998, a Marine and Coastal Policy 2020, and – as mentioned above – the Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan from just two years ago.

Now we are being asked to fill out this new survey by 10 July and say what you REALLY, REALLY, think should happen at Levy’s Beach…

Bloody hell. It’s exhausting, particularly when some of us are still putting our eyeballs back in from telling the EPA what we think about the Wannon Water treatment plant upgrade that will pour industrial effluent into this same stretch of coast.

I am starting to think the WCC is secretly developing a form of psychological torture where they survey citizens into submission, call it consultation, ignore the results, do nothing, and then survey us all over again.

It’s called surveyconsultationitis and is designed to cause temporary insanity and physical exhaustion as we scroll through yet another Survey Monkey and click on the multiple choice.

By the end of it all, we will be gibbering like chimpanzees and that, I suspect, is the whole point.

While we are distracted by all of this “busy work” – as musician and activist John Schumann once described it – our coast continues to suffer.

It continues to be raped and pillaged by those who really don’t give a stuff, and they do so with impunity.

They don’t care: it’s all a bit of a laugh to go up there in your Toyota Hilux and shred the dunes for half an hour, because nobody’s watching and nobody is issuing any fines. More people are fined for parking too long in Liebig St.

The Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan promised this would change.

It promised that the council, Parks Victoria and various state bodies would all work together to protect this precious, wild coastline that is a victim of its isolation.

But the only thing that ever captured the immediate attention of all these bodies was the racehorse training: it was a top priority.

The council moved so fast in late 2018, it was almost as if it had a jigger on its arse: special meetings were held, Ministers were called, planning amendments were rushed through to make the illegal racehorse training that had been going on, legal…

Ah, the power of money.

We don’t need to fill out another survey because we have already spoken, many times: protect this area from any more degradation.

The council knows what it has to do.

Just do it.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

The Weir-McLean scandal gives the Warrnambool City Council the perfect “out” from the disastrous plan to allow 160 racehorses a day at Levy’s Beach.

As it happens, the council will meet tomorrow night (4/2) to give its consent to another part in the approval process.

This time it must give assurances to the Environment Minister, via a letter to the Warrnambool Racing Club, that the horse training is “consistent” with all coastal and marine management plans and policies for the Levy’s area.

This could be awkward, because as far as I know, nobody has yet produced any evidence to say that it is “consistent”. In fact it appears to be the complete opposite.

This fact is just one more inconvenient truth in a whole string of inconvenient truths which the council has had to overlook and tie itself in knots about.

The entire mess has all come about because of political pressure from the Victoria Racing Club, the Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Minister Martin Pakula to primarily accommodate the once-powerful Mr Weir, but – like Mr Weir’s career – it could end tomorrow.

The council can stop the charades, dust itself off and start healing an increasingly diverse community that was co-existing quite nicely until it was torn apart by totally unnecessary greed.

Here are 10 more reasons why it should do so:

1. Darren Weir has been winning despite not having access to Levy’s beach since late 2016. (He won more than $31m in 2017-18 alone).

2. Jarrod McLean has been winning despite not having access to Levy’s beach since 2016. (He won the $2 m Mackinnon Stakes last November.)

3. Their claims that access to Levy’s and the dunes gave them an “edge” look doubtful in light of the allegations they are now facing, including the use of electric shocks as part of training.

4. Weir had 77 horses training in W’bool in 2016. He now has more than 100, despite not having had access to Levy’s beach since 2016.

5. All trainers can still apply for access to run and swim their horses at Lady Bay beach from March right through to December. Swimming is all year round.

6. Former MP and racing supporter James Purcell, whose son is a trainer, said in 2017 that no beach dunes should be used for training, anywhere in the reserve.

7. There is no environmental impact study and no “baseline” study of what it looks like now.

8. There is no economic impact statement, showing how the move will increase jobs or the local economy above what racing already provides.

9. Local indigenous people are devastated by the move and senior elders – including 2018 Victorian Senior of the Year Rob Lowe – are fighting to save the reserve.

10. Millions have been spent building a sand track and other facilities at the Warrnambool racecourse.

So much has been written about this ill-advised plan. So many arguments have been raised. And now the racing industry itself is dealing with a scandal of unprecedented proportions.

Surely, surely, tomorrow night offers a chance for this plan to ride off into the sunset and we can then direct our energies into building a sustainable environment and a sustainable, ethical, local racing industry – based on truths and substance.

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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

Why horses and dogs don’t belong in the conservation and conservation/recreation zones that will stretch from Killarney Beach to Warrnambool:

1. At least 54 species of “conservation significance’ live there, including five listed as critically endangered, particularly the Orange Bellied Parrot, 10 listed as endangered, 20 as vulnerable, and 16 listed as threatened. (draft report p86-87)

2. There WILL be a negative impact on these species. Not “perhaps” or “maybe”: there WILL be a negative impact that reduces their chances of thriving or even surviving. (p29, p33, p34-35)

3. The traditional owners of this country have made it very clear that they do not support racehorse training in the reserve. (p22, p64)

4. Racehorse training at Levy’s Beach WILL cause damage to Aboriginal Cultural Heritage in this area and any artefacts will have to be removed and stored before it begins*. (p64)

5. Horse training WILL cause erosion**. Not perhaps or maybe: it WILL.

6. Every coastal plan for this area in the past 40 years has emphasised the need for MORE protection, not less. This includes the W’Bool City Council’s own Warrnambool Coastal Management Plan, signed off just four years ago.

7. It ignores the Land Conservation Council framework set down for this area in 1978, knowing it would come under increased pressures. As a result of the LCC, the majority of public land in the area was officially set aside in 1979 as a conservation reserve. The LCC emphasises low-impact recreation, conservation and protection. (p83)

8. There are no numbers on exactly how many racehorses would use the most sensitive areas of Levy’s Point, Golfies and Rutledge’s Cutting. (p63-64)

9. Monitoring this area is already difficult because of its isolation.
The area already suffers erosion and damage caused by illegal activities. (p61)
How will the WCC, Vic Police and Parks Vic have the time and resources to monitor it in the future?

10. The bottom line? Commercial racehorse training is not recreation and it is not conservation. This is not anti-horseracing, it is just fact.

Please have your say on the draft management plan for Belfast Coastal Reserve, by March 16, here: www.engage.vic.gov.au/belfast

* The full extent of Indigenous artefacts and cultural sites in this area is not known due to either out-dated or insufficient data. The plan says more studies need to be done.

** There also needs to be more studies into the full impact of horses on beaches, but two referred to in the draft report (p80-81) confirm that horses cause erosion. Here is part of the summary from a 2001 study of horse riding in D’Entrecasteaux National Park, WA:

“Horse riding altered plant species composition, increased the area of bare ground and decreased height and cover of vegetation. Significant impacts occurred after only low levels of horse use. The findings indicate the need for a database on horse riding impact in Australia so that, where horse riding is allowed, impacts can be properly assessed and effectively managed.”

http://www.publish.csiro.au/pc/PC020256