Page 2302 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2022
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standard-breds in his backyard. His place was about a kilometre’s walk from mine, and he trained his horses up at the local harness racing track. I would spend hours down there. He taught me so much about horses.
I can still remember losing control of a yearling standard-bred up at the York track. I think I would have been about 12 years old. He swung around and lashed out with both back feet and kicked me in the knees, and I do not know how I did not break anything. I hit the deck in immense pain. I can tell you, I did not let go of the lead; he dragged me a little way, but he did not get away.
Jerry Randle was the gardener at the local primary school. He was an occasional bus driver. He was as bogan as bogan could be. And, like most of the people in this country that are involved in either greyhound racing, harness racing or thoroughbred racing, he was a genuine battler. He was the sort of guy who should have been a bread-and-butter Labor voter. I do not know if he was, because we never talked politics; we just did not discuss it. All we talked about was horses. It was all we talked about.
Like everyone I have ever known in the horseracing circles, Jerry absolutely loved his horses. If it had been physically possible for them to sleep in the house with him at night-time, he would have welcomed them in each night. He was ridiculous; he was just absurd. Old Jerry Randle is no longer with us, but I can promise you that the pain that is being felt as a consequence of this government’s failure to distribute fair funding to our remaining racing codes—that pain is being felt by the Jerry Randles of this region.
The Greens have this ridiculous perception that racing is the sport of kings and that its ranks are populated by suit-wearing toffs. They also have this unfounded perception that every person involved in horseracing is an animal abuser. They could not be more wrong. The vast majority of those involved in the racing industry in this town are minimum-wage battlers. They are salt of the earth people who are often working a number of jobs to try to pay the rent, to try to put food on the table. These are the people who have been the most hurt by the current insufficient funding and these are the people who have already lost jobs—they have already lost jobs—because trainers are leaving the ACT.
That is not just anecdotal. It is real. It has been reported on by the Canberra Times. I am not going to name those trainers in here, because I know a couple of them are embarrassed at leaving behind this battle. For years, the Canberra Racing Club has been telling the government that their current funding is not sustainable, that it does not allow them to keep pace with the surrounding region. For years, they have been telling you that unless something changes then trainers will leave the ACT. And now everything that they have said is happening.
When Mr Rattenbury, as a minister of this government, puts out a statement to say that he does not support the distribution of a single cent of money for the support of the racing codes, what he is actually saying to those minimum wage, hardworking battlers is that he does not care about their jobs. That is the aspect that is never discussed in this funding debate, when the Greens are talking—the jobs. They say, “Oh, we are going to retrain them.” Seriously, that is not a real-world answer!
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