Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Now that the hammer has fallen on disgraced trainer Darren Weir, the arse has fallen out of the argument to allow 800 racehorses a week to train on a wild beach in the Belfast Coastal Reserve – because this was always about Weir.

Regardless of how the Warrnambool Racing Club, Warrnambool City Council or State Government try to spin it, ramming up the training numbers at Levy’s Beach to industrial levels was all about appeasing Weir.

Racing Minister Martin Pakula said as much in his very public face slap to the council last October:

“Council really needs to decide whether it wants a commercial horse training industry in the City of Warrnambool or it does not…If it doesn’t, it should just say so, because trainers like Darren Weir – and others – have plenty of options.” Warrnambool Standard, Oct 30, 2018

 

Mr Pakula has never actually detailed these other “options”, because there is no other beach in Australia where racehorses can run up and down the dunes en masse. There is a simple reason for this – dunes damage easily.

But who cares about that minor detail, the blackmail message was clear: No Weir, no Warrnambool racing industry.

Parks Victoria originally thought 65 racehorses a day across the whole 22km stretch of the Belfast Coastal Reserve might be a reasonable number.

This was the number it came up with in 2016, before the Belfast Coastal Management Reserve Plan was developed in 2018.

It turns out Parks Victoria was hopelessly naive.

As of last year, Warrnambool had about 250-300 racehorses in training: of those, Weir trained about 100 and counting.

A total of 65 horses training across the whole reserve was never going to cut it for Weir’s mega-stable.

It wasn’t even close.

 

So when the Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan hit the decks last July, the daily number had suddenly more than doubled – to 160 – and all of the racehorses (apart from some ‘historic’ trainers near Killarney) would be poured into Levy’s Beach, just 10 minutes from Weir’s Warrnambool stables.

The stretch of wild beach with its threatened Hooded Plover population and fragile dune system had become the sacrificial lamb to Weir’s ambitions.

Weir the Invincible. Mr Magic. Mr Superstar who won $33 million in prize money in just 12 months.

And now we know behind all of the “magic” was something terrible and cruel.

There was no secret tonic in the dunes.

They found three tasers in Weir’s bedroom.

 

Weir’s demise has exposed the rotten core to a career that no doubt began with hard work and heart, but which veered dangerously off course.

Because the tasers – and the criminal charges that may be yet to come – follow a string of convictions against Weir under the rules of racing, especially around the illegal use of anti-inflammatories and pumping horses pre-race with bi-carb soda in a practice known as “tubing”.

But such was Weir’s dazzling success, everybody looked the other way, even when his rapid rise seemed to pass the realms of the explainable.

“No Weir, no Warrnambool racing industry”: that was the only message.

And now there is no Weir.

So what does this mean for our dunes and our wild beach?

Is it business as usual, keep moving, nothing to see here?

Surely not.

Surely the game is up. Surely now, as Cr Michael Neoh hinted last week, Levy’s is not needed and allowing local trainers to continue to access the ever-shrinking beach at Lady Bay is more than enough? 

 

We no longer need the carpark graders to move into Levy’s and Spookies, do we?

We no longer need to keep explaining that 800 horses a week running along a stretch of beach (including 200 up and down a dune) in a coastal reserve will destroy it, do we?

The Warrnambool Racing Club and Racing Victoria are no longer going to rely on a great lie – rather than environmentally stringent plans – to sustain our local racing industry, are they?

If the answers to these last three questions are yes, yes and yes, then our local racing industry really is doomed and it has nothing to do with Weir this time, but our own collective stupidity at letting it happen.

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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

The Warrnambool City Council is claiming its budget is tight, yet it spent more than $10,000 to send seven people – including the CEO of the Warrnambool Racing Club – to a tourism conference at a Mornington Peninsula resort last July.

The council has confirmed two councillors, WRC chief Peter Downs and four council staff attended the Victorian Tourism Industry Council annual conference held at the RACV Cape Schanck Resort from July 30-31.

The council has put the total bill for the conference at $9034, including $3934 in accommodation and $4830 in conference fees and only $270 in food.

I have received reliable information, however, that the final cost also included more than $1000 in drinks in the resort’s Lighthouse Lounge and more than $400 on meals and drinks in its cafe.

 

A council spokesman said “any food /drinks beyond (the $270) would have been settled by the individual(s) themselves as a personal expense”. Perhaps the big drinks bill was repaid, but I have not seen any evidence of that.

Those who attended the conference included now-mayor Tony Herbert, who is chair of the council’s Visitor Economy Advisory Committee, fellow committee member Cr David Owen (both funded their share through their councillor allowance), the council’s head of Visitor Economy, David McMahon, and three other council staff from Visitor Economy.

The final delegate was racing chief Mr Downs, who nominated and was chosen to join the council’s Visitor Economy Advisory Committee when it started in May 2017.

The conference, by the way, included sunset drinks at the St Andrews Beach boutique brewery which has been converted from first class racing stables and was worthy of a tweet from Mr Downs (see below).

There are two things about this story that don’t sit right.

First, as we know, the council is surveying ratepayers right now as part of a process to try and lift rates above the 2.5% cap.

The council is saying that it must save at least $700,000 a year for the next three years and the only two options we have been given are to either cut services, or raise rates.

Given this, what a double-standard – or perhaps a better word is insult – for the council to have sent seven people off to Cape Schanck to learn the latest in tourism trends, funded by an obviously healthy professional development budget.

The issue here is not only the money, but the mindset: while ratepayers have to expect cuts to services like childcare, council networking opportunities can roll on as normal.

The second unsettling aspect of this story is the inclusion of Mr Downs.

It is no secret that Mr Downs’, as CEO of the WRC, has been a major player in pushing for commercial racehorse training at Levy’s Beach, in the Belfast Coastal Reserve, and lobbying to make sure this happened.

 

In fact when Mr Downs was chosen for the council committee in 2017, it was just eight months after racehorse training was banned at Levy’s because of concerns raised by Aboriginal Victoria and the push by the WRC to get racehorses back on the beach was in full swing.

This council doesn’t seem overly fussed by potential conflicts of interest around the racehorse training issue, but I would have thought the decision to appoint Mr Downs’ to the visitor economy committee in the first place – given the political context – was questionable.

The issue here is not that Mr Downs has done anything wrong – he is only taking what is offered – but that the council considers all of it acceptable.

On any measure, Mr Downs has been given the sort of out-of-hours access to key members within council that others could only dream of, if they were lobbying in the same manner.

In this case, it has even paid the bill.

 

According to a lengthy council statement in response to my questions, Mr Downs was chosen for the conference after the council asked for “expressions of interest” from all six community members of its visitor economy committee and only Mr Downs responded.

The statement also says it is appropriate that Mr Downs is on the council committee, because the WRC is a significant player in the local economy and tourism.

Further, the council says, nothing about racehorse training or the Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan has been raised in the committee meetings. Nothing at all? Really? What about before the meetings, or after?

By coincidence, the final Belfast Coastal Reserve Management Plan, which said racehorse training should resume, came out during the tourism conference.

Was this hot potato raised during drinks at St Andrews brewery or over dinner at Cape Schanck? We don’t know.

 

We do know, however, that Cr Tony Herbert – within three days of becoming Mayor on October 29 last year – placed sorting out the racehorse training issue at the very top of his to-do list.

You can read the full council statement on this whole issue here. 

In a nutshell it justifies the conference by saying the council values professional development opportunities, that the funds came out of a professional development budget and that there were several important outcomes, including: a follow-up meeting by VTIC in Warrnambool, a range of new marketing tactics, valuable networking and contacts, and passing on “key learnings” to other staff and councillors.

Worth every cent? I will leave you to decide.

(Mr Downs was contacted for comment last week on this piece. He is yet to respond.)

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Management Plan for the Levy’s Point Coastal Reserve

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Here is yet another plan for Levy’s Point that was started, never really finished, and then forgotten.

Warrnambool Mayor Tony Herbert recently claimed that the Belfast Coastal Management Plan was the first plan for the area in 150 years.

This is not true.

There have been several plans, including this one commissioned by the Warrnambool City Council back in 1998.

Nowhere does it mention using the area for large-scale racehorse training.

In fact it doesn’t mention racehorses at all, only recreational horse riding and a small horse riding ring.

It also mentions the potential for illegal four wheel driving and motorbike riding to worsen, due to numerous management tracks leading into the dunes.

Some of these dunes, the plan says, had already blown out, and other “large, active dunes” needed “stabilisation and revegetation”.

These “large, active” dunes are in the very area where commercial racehorse training will now be permitted – having been illegal –  and up to 40 racehorses a day, five days a week, will be allowed to pound up and down what is called “Hoon Hill”.

How this fits into any plan for “stabilisation and revegetation” is beyond me.

 

 

Just the fact that – 20 years on – authorities now refer to this area as “Hoon Hill” says it all really.

Those in charge of looking after Levy’s Point gave up on the place.

The illegal four wheel driving and motorbike riding was not stopped, so it worsened, until it got to the point where some dunes were so damaged that they are now considered suitable only for large-scale racehorse training, which, of course, will ruin them even further.

For any councillor to claim that they did not know the history of this area and the extent of the damage done is ludicrous, unless, like the current President of the United States, they don’t read, don’t research or don’t want to know.

This 1998 plan follows the government’s Land Conservation Council plan of 1978, and pre-dates the council’s Coastal Management Plan of 2013.

They all say the same thing: the need for conservation, restoration, protection, promoting low-impact activities and eco-tourism, controlling four-wheel-drive access, and not repeating the mistakes of earlier times when sand mining and rendering plants were considered okay.

And yet here we are, not only about to repeat a mistake, but doing so with our eyes wide open.

[This is a modified version of a Facebook post that ran after the meeting.]