The second phase of the Racing Industry Transition Agency's (RITA) work on changing the structure of New Zealand racing became public last week with the first reading of the Racing Industry Bill in Parliament.
The bill now heads to the select committee process, in this case the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, with submissions closing on February 11.
The bill is 100 pages long but the key factors are:
Property of racing clubs: or perhaps more importantly how racing club assets should be used, who makes those decisions and if they are sold, who benefits from those sales.
Betting: what sort of betting products the new TAB will be able to offer.
Intellectual property: under the bill the TAB will own all the intellectual property of New Zealand, which in lay terms is the racing information and broadcasting rights, effectively any information used to bet on or watch New Zealand racing.
For many punters simply hoping for a Saturday winner, such matters may seem irrelevant, but the emotional hot button for others will be potential track closures.
The bill should ultimately bring into law that the individual racing codes can gain control of an asset, for example an entire racetrack, if it is deemed surplus to that region's racing needs. Which means, if your code thinks they don't need your track, they can close it or basically do whatever they want with it and keep most or even all the profits.
There are, of course, checks put in place which mean an independent review can be sought by any racing club and Racing Minister Winston Peters would have to sign off on any race course being sold and the money going to the industry.
So the language of the bill gives clubs plenty of protection from any overbearing code but will give ultimately the minister the option to close a club, sell their assets and use the money for the good of the industry.
It should, in theory, halt some of the ridiculous stand-offs between clubs and their codes, some of who refuse to talk to each other.
This is a farcical situation and an embarrassment to an industry asking the Government to take it seriously.
Clubs like the Westland Racing Club aren't interested in having their assets vested for the good of the racing industry, so this week it sold its racecourse to the local council for a reported $100.
It may not be the last club looking to return its track to the local community rather than the racing industry, even if that ignores all the money the racing industry has put into that asset over the last century or so.
RITA is understood to have sought a moratorium halting such sales until the bill passed but that was turned down so until probably next May at the earliest, it is open season for racing clubs wanting to sell their tracks for small change to stop racing bosses taking control.
It is cutting off their noses to spite the industry's face but with the pace of legislative change so painfully slow, nobody can stop them.
None of this is RITA's fault, it is moving as fast as it can. It just has to push an enormously complex boulder up a mountain before it reaches the top and can create the momentum the industry needs.
The biggest target of any industry vesting of assets is clearly Avondale, which indicated to the Herald this week it wanted to race and race only at its west Auckland track, although there have been at least some high-level talks with other clubs.
Secret talks, fire sales of racetracks, almost nobody getting what they actually want.
Welcome to the racing industry 2019.
Surely 2020 can only be better.
Racing Industry Bill
• The Racing Industry Bill was presented to Parliament last week.
• The key points are the use or vesting of racing club assets and the ownership of the industry's intellectual property.
• Submissions to the select committee can be made until February 11 at: www.parliament.nz/make-a-submission
