curious

JMO. If it has to be deemed "without support of substantial evidence" or is "arbitrary, capricious or characterized by abuse of discretion" , then they've got two shows, little and none.

What's that got to do with it? Completely irrelevant.

Just to be clear, the rule says the horse "may" be disqualified. There is a severity test for that and stewards still must determine that the interference affected the result of the race. In this sort of case it might be that a horse that probably would have finished fourth or better ended up 8th as a result of the foul. They do not have to show that the interfered with horse/s would have beaten the horse causing the interference though like here. It still took stewards 20 minutes to make the decision.

He is using the stakes funding data I think. https://www.nzrb.co.nz/sites/default/files/documents/NZRB_Club_Net_Stakes_2016.pdf

Yes, any horse. If he finished 10th he would still be subject to DQ. Not sure if they'd bother if no stake money was involved....

I wish we did. No arguments about whether the interfered with horse/s would have won or not. You just can't do it, even in the first furlong. Much safer and cleaner.

Because the rule is different there. Along the lines that if any horse in a race, swerves or is ridden to either side so as to interfere with or intimidate or impede any other horse or jockey, or to cause same, it is a foul any offending horses may be disqualified. To me, the disqualification was a certainty.

As far as I am aware, the reportedly some 1700 submissions on the Messara report have not been made public. If I'm missing them somewhere, would someone please point me to them.

Editorial space limitations?

You mean you think they've got it arse backwards which was the intention of the 2003 Act to allow? Kind of reverse Robinhood maybe?

Nice work Laurie. That's why the industry is headed for extinction. Where are Ellerslie, Trentham, Waikato, Awapuni etc?

I thought I'd move this thread here to disentangle it from the CEO one. Agree with most of the points here except I don't agree that the function of the Companies Act is in any way analagous to that of the Racing Act or that the NZRB is similar to a company formed under the Companies Act. They are different beasts. I agree that government does not own companies as you say. They are formed and must operate under the regulation of the Companies Act but can earn revenue as they see fit and do what they wish with those earnings. They are created and operate UNDER the Act, not BY the Act. The NZRB on the other hand is created directly BY the Racing Act as a statutory body. The Act also dictates how it may earn revenue and how any net revenue must be used, as you point out above Laurie. It also directly monitors performance, licenses it (for free) as the sole betting operator in NZ and gives the government direct control over appointment of directors. This does not happen with companies formed under the Companies Act. The question of ownership however, seems a step away from the question of relative government assistance for racing between here and Oz. It is about what the respective governments give and get from racing. My point is that the differential in favour of racing is far greater in NZ than in Oz, albeit in a different form. If you accept that betting duty, GST and other taxes etc. are similar in both places, though from slightly different structures, the primary difference is that the NZ govt. collects no licence fee and no income tax. So, when people read that an Oz government have given some of that back to racing, they fail to understand what the NZ government/taxpayer are already 'giving' by way of the Racing Act. So, for example, using the 2018 NZRB figures, the reported net operating profit was $155m. If that were in Oz or any other company here, the government would collect say, $50m in income tax from that. Add say a $15-$20m licence fee and you would have a situation similar to Victoria if those amounts were paid to government. Here, they are already given via the Racing Act. In Victoria, the government collects them then may choose to give some of that back to the industry. If they were collected by government here, then there may be some credible argument on a parity basis to say the government should provide more assistance. However, as it stands, racing here is getting much more in proportion from government than is Racing Victoria for example. So, to suggest otherwise, or say that NZ racing is receiving NOTHING from government is simply rubbish in my view.

Thanks Laurie. I don't have the 1992 figures to confirm that but the latest 2018 figures are here.https://www.nzrb.co.nz/sites/default/files/documents/NZRB1679_Annual_Report_2018_FINAL2.pdf if you want to take a look. I was about to write a fuller response but just saw this which is along similar lines to my thoughts that I was about to share. Good to have your input again. https://www.RP.net/node/3181

About 170 going round. Should be a good day. Weather looks not too bad. No word of closure as far as I know. Still destined as a training and trials venue only though with no immediate plans for racing but would be getting close to capability for that if needed.

Yes and it says Note: Numbers shown are the distance from the winner in lengths. But aside from the lack of finish order, those numbers are not shown. How bad can this get?

I'm not an accountant like you Reefton so I'll let you crunch the numbers but this is what the DIA RIS on the original bill had to say about the matter. 1. For comparison, the Inland Revenue Department estimated in its RIS for GST on cross‑border services and intangibles that around 100 offshore suppliers would register voluntarily to pay GST (over 80 had registered as of December 2016), leading to an estimated net gain in revenue of up to $40 million per annum. Now that's the total based on 15% of revenue for that range of services but cabinet and the MAC now think that 2% of turnover on the wagering component of that will amount to $24m. Please help me understand this.

There seem to be a few 'G' words involved here. Another one aside from grub and grab is gambling which appears to be liberally interpreted. Aside from anything else, the cabinet estimate of returns from the PoC tax is based as follows (see note 6, Cabinet paper #3). “The NZRB’s estimate for the POC charge is derived from anonymised credit card data from ANZ (which accounts for approximately one-third of the New Zealand credit card market) which categorises transactions by New Zealanders through a gambling Merchant code which enabled them to identify which deposits were with offshore betting providers.” If you go look at those codes you will see that deposits to racing and sports wagering providers are conflated with online casinos, lotteries etc. https://www.anz.com/Documents/Business/CommercialCard/Merchant_cateogry_codes_control.pdf 7995 Betting, including Lottery Tickets, Casino Gaming Chips, Off-Track Betting and Wagers at Race Tracks Are they suggesting that racing should be entitled to a PoC tax on NZ resident spending via online lotteries, casinos etc? 'Cos that brings us back from Gambling to Grubbing and Grabbing doesn't it? Of course this might partially explain why their estimate of NZ resident overseas betting spend or turnover is 50% higher than their internal spend.

OK Reefton. Gotcha now. You are referring to the February MAC report. However, on p.20 it says " The committee understands and supports the principle behind this recommendation to redistribute industry assets to fund infrastructure investment at the remaining venues. But we do not believe vesting of club assets to the code is necessarily the right vehicle to achieve the outcome this recommendation is trying to achieve. " So given there is no further mention of this in the 3 subsequent cabinet papers, I'm assuming that idea has at least been shelved.

OK. You are reading something different from me. None of the 3 recent cabinet papers are more than 16 pages. What are you actually reading?

Reefton, can you please point us to where you read that? I may have missed it in the cabinet papers but just had another look and don't see any mention of club assets. They may have some crafty way of legislating around it, but as it stands, the Racing Act can not over-ride any other Act, including as you say, the Incorporated Societies Act which is what most race clubs are based on. Many clubs are involved in other equine and non-equine community activities, farming operations, various partnerships etc. So, it seems to me that if they are not happy with directions as to race dates and venues, they will simply de-register so they are not subject to the Racing Act, possibly amend their constitutions and retain their assets for the communities that created them?

Thanks Reefton. Yes, you'd think the IRD data would provide a pretty accurate figure of what is being wagered by NZ residents with overseas providers, though that may include lotteries, casinos etc. and not be separable from that. As you say though, it is based on revenue, not turnover, so would likely be a good estimate of actual expenditure and since overseas providers are already reporting it seems it would make revenue a better basis for a PoC if any, than turnover. Why the likes of cabinet and the MAC have not obtained and used/published it seems somewhat incredulous. Instead, they have used some airy fairy NZRB figures from the ANZ based on credit card deposits. How those are related to revenue or turnover is difficult to comprehend. If the MAC and cabinet can't be bothered, I may do an OIA request for that data and report back. It surely can't be considered commercially sensitive in gross. Though previous experience of OIA requests suggests they will use their full 30 days before providing anything.

I was hoping someone would correct me on this topic sooner or later. Thanks.

Might have just been a typo in the paper? Possibly was meant to read .24 million, not 24 million?

The DIA were gentle with the monkeys, eh? Probably in the interests of animal welfare? DIA believes there are reasons to be more cautious in this assumption. Lower levels of voluntary compliance would both reduce the amount of money collected by any charges and increase the cost of administering collection and enforcement.This, combined with the margins for error around the projected returns from these charges (particularly the consumption charge), means that it is not possible to state with certainty how much money might be collected and available for ultimate distribution to the New Zealand racing and sports sectors. The Minister does not wish to implement any measures that depart significantly from the options which were recommended by the Working Group. For that reason, several alternatives that may otherwise have been considered are noted in this Statement but were screened out at an early stage.