"It is a great place to live and a great place to train," Busuttin tells the Herald.
"Back home, training has become almost impossible to make money out of.
"I have got friends with 50 horses in work and they are losing money.
"But here the whole business of training is simpler.
"There is no travel, consistent racing for good stakes and the club [the Macau Jockey Club] take care of most of the managerial side of the stable.
"I don't even get a bill for the feed we buy."
Macau is the home of casino gambling in Asia and with the Chinese passion for a wager a mini-Vegas has sprung up.
Where there are gamblers there will be people who want to bet on horses and the Macau Jockey Club has tapped into that market.
The region originally dabbled with harness racing but that faded out in the 1980s, with the gallops a better fit thanks to the mega-rich racing mecca of Hong Kong being just an hour away by ferry.
But the two forms of racing could hardly be more different.
If Sha Tin is the Randwick of the region, Macau is more like racing at Gisborne or on the West Coast - just with much higher stake money.
Busuttin has trained successfully in Singapore and sums up the relative racing strengths of the Asian countries with ease.
"Hong Kong is like Australian galloping, the big time.
"Whereas Singapore is like North Island galloping back home at the good tracks, like Ellerslie.
"And Macau is a step back from that, more like South Island racing or the North Island provincials.
"But with a minimum stake which would be about NZ$30,000 per race."
Rather than seeing that as a weakness, Busuttin says it is a strength, one New Zealand owners could be wise to exploit.
"I have a little mare racing here who might have won one race in the South Island or maybe up north had she stayed home but over here she has won three races worth $30,000 each.
"The standard of horses just isn't as tough as Singapore but the stakes are good so it makes financial sense.
"And it is not a closed shop like Hong Kong."
There are rules, though, with owners who want to send their horses to Macau having to become members of the MJC, a one-off expense.
"After that it would be about $15,000 to get a horse flown up here, registered and all the work done so they are ready to race.
"But I think it is a market owners with horses battling back home could do worse than to look at."
Macau racing wouldn't suit all Kiwi horses, though, with the emphasis on speed, especially in the sand track races which comprise half the regular night programme, on which they run as hard as they can for as long as they can.
The standard is improving, though, with the track holding its first truly international race recently.
The 1300m Sand Premier Cup saw horses from Australia, England and Hong Kong join the locals but it was Golden Star, trained by former top jockey Gary Moore, who led throughout for Macau.
Moore is a showman and Macau racing's marketing dream with his perfect soundbites and love of the camera, which is crucial because in Macau the only things people do more often than take photos is gamble. Or smoke.
Moore embodies Macau, where the hype of Vegas makes an odd bedfellow for the manners and decorum of doing business in Asia.
But racing is very much the little brother to the all-powerful casinos in Macau and Busuttin likes it that way.
"It is relaxed training here," he says.
"Back home in New Zealand you can be up at 4.30am, work a team, and then drive hours to the races.
"If you are lucky enough to train a winner the race might be worth $6000 and the owners barely cover their training bills for the month.
"Here, the same horse can actually make good money."
But doesn't Busuttin, a man who has raced at Flemington and Royal Ascot, miss the glamour of the big stage?
"I can be part of that by watching Trent," he says, bursting with pride at his son's recent VRC Derby training win with talented 3-year-old colt Sangster.
And he has tasted plenty of his own glory since coming north, winning last season's Macau Derby with Imabayboy.
"Life, and racing, are different up here. Not better in all ways but better in some."
Like riding your pushbike back to the track - clad in shorts and sandals - on a warm Macau afternoon, a world away from an early morning New Zealand frost and the battle to make ends meet.
