‘Are the premier and his team embarrassed by this?’
Monday’s opening hearing session into the proposed sale and redevelopment of Rosehill racecourse was enthralling, but there wasn’t a smoking gun.
There were suggestions that witnesses, including Group 1-winning trainer John O’Shea, were pressured not to appear before the NSW Upper House Select Committee, but proving those veiled threats is another thing altogether.
And the bipartisan panel of MPs may yet unearth evidence to prove that and more. As written in the aftermath of Monday’s opening session, Racing NSW and its chief executive Peter V’landys were the panel’s primary target.
It has since been confirmed that V’landys will have his right of reply in front of the Committee at one, or both, of the upcoming scheduled hearings on August 9 and September 12.
The person who escaped the opening day blowtorch was Labor premier Chris Minns, but his time may well come.
2GB talkback radio host Chris O’Keefe, a known racing fan, called the proposal “even more dead in the water than I thought it was”.
He suggested this week that the $5 billion-plus figures being floated for the sale of Rosehill were “fanciful”.
“I know for a fact that developers are warning both the ATC and the government that this $5, 6, $7 billion figure is fanciful because there is no Australian developer that has that kind of money to make an upfront payment, so forget that,” O’Keefe said.
“No one is going to come in and hand over the whole site, it won’t happen. What you’d have to do is sell off plots, almost like a land release programme, and you stage it over a period of time because you can’t flood the market with the same product otherwise you’ll affect the sale price.
“You’re potentially talking ten, 15, 20 years to realise the full proceeds of the sale of Rosehill and the way things are with building at the moment, the fundamentals of which are unlikely to change in that time, there might not be many developers willing to grab those sites anyway because they can’t make money from them.”
He said the plans to redevelop Rosehill are “riddled with problems” and the public relations spin around the proposed sale have been “amateur and unfair on the racing industry”.
“Are the premier and his team embarrassed by this?” O’Keefe asked.
“They certainly aren’t talking about the sale of Rosehill any more, are they, because they know what I am saying is true.
“Was it NSW Labor so desperately trying to get a good headline on housing that they sold the voters an empty box or were they sold snake oil by the ATC? One of those [scenarios] is the truth.”
History is the precedent when it comes to the intertwining racing and politics in New South Wales.
Such a scenario cost then Liberal premier Mike Baird his job when he attempted to ban greyhound racing, with voters soon turning on him and the Nationals losing a byelection in the seat of Orange after a massive swing against the party in late 2016.
It saw Baird fall on his sword, resigning in early 2017, and greyhound racing surviving.
Fast forward almost eight years and if the Minns-led Labor government has tried to play politics with racing, the premier could also face the axe, either from his own party or the electorate.
As it stands, Minns was untouched in Monday’s opening Upper House Select Committee hearing, given the focus on V’landys and Racing NSW, but he is sure to face the heat from the Liberals, Nationals and the crossbench MPs on the ten-person panel in the upcoming hearings.
Racing people, punters and owners in particular who largely indulge their passion despite the financial losses incurred, are passionate and their political allegiances are often put to one side if they think racing (and their involvement in it) is being challenged.