Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Bills

Racing Amendment (Unauthorised Access) Bill 2022

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mr CHEESEMAN (South Barwon) (18:30): It is with some pleasure that I again rise to my feet to continue my contribution on the Racing Amendment (Unauthorised Access) Bill 2022. In my earlier comments I was of course referring to the very proud tradition of the Labor Party and indeed of people who seek preselection and make their way as Labor members to this chamber in championing the rights of people in their workplace, particularly in terms of making sure that people have fair occupational health and safety arrangements which ensure effectively that they are able to return each night to their loved ones without workplace injury. That is a right that is very much something that has been championed by members of the Labor Party here in this place.

Workers in the racing industry I believe are equally entitled to have a set of rights in their workplace that ensure that they can very much participate in their workplaces and not be subjected to circumstances which may see them injured or killed. From my end, we have seen from time to time people in an unlawful way interfering with the conduct of a race. As I was reflecting earlier, racehorses weigh something like half a tonne and are moving at exceptionally quick speeds. In that circumstance, if people make their way onto the racecourse and interfere with the conduct of that race, that has the potential to cause horrific injuries if not death to those animals and indeed to those jockeys. When I was looking at the elements in this bill and reflecting on the work that I have done for most of my adult life, at one point as an occupational health and safety representative on the job, what I sought to do in that role was to represent workers to make sure that they were able to conduct their work with the necessary tools, the necessary training and the systems of work to keep them safe. With this legislation, if this passes, I think it will very much add to those workers in that industry being able to do their work.

I am a country member. I represent one of the four seats in and around the Geelong region. We do have a significant racing industry in our region. That racing industry of course contributes to our economy massively. There are many thousands of people that have their employment and their economic livelihood underpinned by the racing industry, and we want to make it sustainable, and we want to make it safe for people to be able to participate. This bill in so many ways builds on that capacity to have a sustainable and safe industry, and that is why I am very pleased to see that it has made its way to this chamber. I am looking forward to it passing through this chamber this evening and making its way to the Legislative Council. I certainly commend the work of the minister on this bill.

Ms BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (18:35): I rise today to speak on the Racing Amendment (Unauthorised Access) Bill 2022. The purpose of the bill is to amend the Racing Act 1958. It will prohibit unauthorised access to certain areas of racecourses during meetings and official trial meetings. The main area of change in the legislation will set the standards of behaviour at certain locations at racecourses—restricted areas including the track, mounting yards and stables. Behaviour such as climbing fences adjacent to restricted areas and throwing or kicking projectiles into restricted areas are included in the legislation, as is flying drones over those restricted areas. This is an important bill because this type of behaviour, whether deliberate or accidental, can lead to animals reacting unpredictably, in turn creating a risk of injury to both people and animals near that area. It also ensures patrons do not inadvertently enter a racetrack area, which can endanger them and participants or disrupt the races.

The racing industry, made up of thoroughbreds, harness and greyhounds, is extremely important to my electorate of South-West Coast. Recent figures show racing contributes $112.3 million to the south-west economy annually, made up of $78.6 million from thoroughbred racing, $19.1 million from harness racing and $14.5 million from the greyhound racing industry. The industry employs 900 people in the region, 637 full-time equivalent positions in thoroughbreds, 148 in harness racing and 114 in greyhounds, so the employment benefits of the racing industry in South-West Coast are clear for everyone to see. But it also has many social and economic drivers. One example is the three-day Warrnambool May Racing Carnival. This year almost 30 000 people attended the carnival. While it is a favourite event for locals, it also draws many people from across Victoria, interstate and even internationally. The carnival generates almost $15 million to the Warrnambool economy, $8.9 million representing new money into the area and the region. More than 250 people are employed on a casual basis for the carnival outside of those who are normally employed in the industry. There are 20 race meetings in Warrnambool each year, with the Jericho Cup, the Lafferty Thackeray Steeplechase Day, and Koroit, Port Fairy and Woodford cups being other major race days.

Greyhound racing also has a strong following in South-West Coast. Warrnambool Greyhound Racing Club was formed in the 1920s and moved to the Warrnambool Showgrounds in the 1970s. It hosts many meets, with the Warrnambool Cup being the showcase event. It is one of 11 country cups held in Victoria each year and it is the last leg of the Western Festival of Racing, which also includes the Horsham, Ballarat and Geelong cups. There is no doubt some of the major attractions of the May racing carnival are the Grand Annual Steeplechase event and other jumps races across the three days.

Jumps racing is a contentious issue and is the catalyst for much of the protest action we see at Warrnambool, particularly over the May racing carnival. The protest action is why this legislation is needed. In 2010 a then 56-year-old full-time student from Melbourne ran onto the Warrnambool Racecourse only minutes before the Grand Annual Steeplechase. He was convicted and fined in the Warrnambool court $500. He told the Warrnambool Standard he would do it again if it would end jumps racing, and this is the problem with some of these protesters. I have been told that in recent years protesters have used drones at the Warrnambool Racecourse, which is why I am glad to see legislation against this in part of the bill. Many protesters believe the end justifies the means and are prepared to go to any lengths to get their point across, but we cannot accept a situation where protesters put their own lives at risk as well as others’ lives—patrons, officials and the animals—for the sake of making a political point.

I am a supporter of jumps racing. It is a major drawcard for the May racing carnival and it is steeped in tradition. Importantly, enhancements to the jumps in recent times have helped strengthen the safety for horses and jockeys. There are those who want to see jumps racing banned. They do not care about the benefit it brings to my electorate and the racing industry as a whole. They refuse to listen to any reasoned argument due to their own dogma. This bill does not restrict people from protesting outside courses, as happens at the May racing carnival. Most of those protests, while sometimes disruptive, are for the most part civil. Protesting is a right in Victoria but harassing or intimidating other patrons is totally unacceptable. It is not a right to act in a way that endangers people or animals, and this bill will help ensure that there are added deterrents to such behaviour. This bill is widely supported by the racing industry, an industry that I proudly support. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr EDBROOKE (Frankston) (18:40): It is great to rise and speak on the Racing Amendment (Unauthorised Access) Bill 2022. We have heard a number of very spirited contributions from members of Parliament. It seems that quite a few people have got some opposing views, but nevertheless very passionate views, on horseracing. I would say though that in my opinion horseracing is a legal sport, it is a sport that many people enjoy, and this bill goes a long way to ensuring that this sport can be done safely and the spectators, the people that work in this industry and the sportspeople themselves can be safe.

The Victorian racing industry contributes $4.7 billion annually to the Victorian economy, it helps sustain 34 900 full-time equivalent jobs across our state, and the government is committed to ensuring that Victorian remains a pre-eminent racing jurisdiction in Australia. I have friends who love to go to the Mornington races, the Port Albert races, the Moe races. They love to have a bet on the nags and the gee-gees. I have been with them. It is not something that I say I really enjoy—I like the atmosphere and whatnot—but I do see the way this industry contributes to our community.

It is good to be here today talking about a bill that in many ways puts in regulations and enshrines into law safety around these races, because for years we have had some fairly sporadic but fairly serious issues with people protesting by running onto racetracks, which could be just disastrous. Several members have talked about that there seems to be a misunderstanding of how fast a horse can pull up, what they weigh and how dangerous it is to be running out onto the field whether you are protesting or not. I do not begrudge anyone’s right to think how they want to think, to believe what they want to believe or to have an educated opinion, but there are ways to do it, and the way that some people have carried out their protests has been dangerous. They are not only endangering themselves but endangering animals, endangering sportspeople and endangering the people that work in this industry.

To that end this bill identifies certain parts of a racecourse as restricted areas for the purposes of the new offences and penalties relating to unauthorised access to those areas during a race or official trial meeting. I think this makes total common sense, and it is being done in consultation with the racing industry. There are also a bunch of new offences to manage crowd behaviour. The bill inserts provisions into the Racing Act 1958 to create offences with regard to specific behaviours in and around restricted areas without a reasonable excuse. These offences are entirely consistent with similar offences in the Major Events Act 2009, which applies at major sports events covered by the act. These include eight of Victoria’s feature race meetings during the Spring Racing Carnival: Caulfield Racecourse on Caulfield Cup Day, Caulfield Guineas Day and Thousand Guineas Day; Flemington Racecourse on a day that a race meeting of the Melbourne Cup Carnival takes place; and Moonee Valley Racecourse on Cox Plate Day. The bill does not affect the operation of the Major Events Act itself; it is just an important piece of legislation to ensure that those race meetings continue to be subject to all the relevant legislation and provisions in the Major Events Act, which extend beyond the management of crowd behaviour.

Fortunately this bill seeks to address behaviour that does not occur frequently, that is quite sporadic. Nevertheless, the potential consequences of that behaviour are very, very serious for all involved, and I think any occurrence is extremely concerning. Again, many members have said that people who work in Victoria, regardless of what environment they work in or what area they work in, are entitled to a safe workplace, and this bill ensures that. It does that by adding these additional deterrents, which are already in place in other major sporting events and codes and are obviously now needed to make sure the safety and welfare of participants, workers, animals, sportspeople and patrons at Victorian race meetings and official trial meetings are put at the forefront and offences are able to be prosecuted via the law. I commend the bill to the house.

Dr READ (Brunswick) (18:45): I am doing my best not to get thrown out of the chamber on my last day. I rise to speak on the Racing Amendment (Unauthorised Access) Bill 2022. This bill amends the Racing Act 1958 to prohibit unauthorised access to restricted areas of racecourses during race meetings and create offences and penalties for breaches. As we have heard from other speakers today, this bill is presented as a safety measure to prevent people from getting too close to horses during a race, and I am sure that safety is one reason why we are seeing this bill. However, the other reason for the bill is to prevent protesters from disrupting races. Many of us observe that commercial horseracing is a cruel and outdated pastime which pushes horses often beyond their limits, leading to regular fractures and lung haemorrhages requiring the horses to be put down. Unsuccessful horses become pet food. It is an industry centred around gambling, cruelty and ostentatious displays of wealth. There is an awful lot of money in commercial horseracing, particularly when you think about the rapidly growing online betting industry.

So it is no wonder that people may want to hold protests at race meetings and no surprise that, fresh after passing a bill to outlaw and intimidate forest protesters under the guise of occupational safety, this government has produced this bill, which would do the same to those protesting at horseraces, and it should therefore be no surprise that the Greens oppose the bill. Since Parliament is not expected to sit beyond today, this bill will not get to make it to the upper house—during this Parliament, anyway. If the government thought it was really necessary to bring in this bill, it would be law by now. In fact I wonder if the bill will even return next year or whether it has just been presented as a time-waster to prevent Parliament from discussing non-government business on the notice paper. Parliament’s time should be more valuable than that, and on that note I will conclude here.

Ms McLEISH (Eildon) (18:47): I rise to speak on the Racing Amendment (Unauthorised Access) Bill 2022. I have quite a number of racetracks in my electorate, and whilst you would think and expect that what this bill is trying to do is already in place, actually it needs to be formalised, because this is, as I understand, an unwritten agreement. But we have had incidents, and we have had way too many incidents, where horseraces have been disrupted and disrupted to quite a large extent. When we see serial pests consistently—and there was a time quite a number of years ago that one serial pest consistently turned up at so many different events to disrupt them—I think that is not positive for anybody. If you have a look at the horses that get spooked by these sorts of people, the worst thing that can happen to a horse is to get spooked and race off in the wrong direction through the barrier, throw the jockey and end up causing all sorts of damage to the horse themselves, the jockey and possibly innocent bystanders. Horses that are spooked—it is not a very nice thing to see. They are very large beasts, and they can cause, as I said, some damage.

Often it is all because of some idiotic behaviour of somebody who thinks that they want to make a stand and would like to show everybody how brave and good they are, but I think the damage that they do to the industry is pretty sad, actually. It is really disturbing to hear. I heard the member for South-West Coast in her contribution talk about the importance of particularly jumps racing down in her electorate at Warrnambool. Everybody knows the jumps carnival. It is one of the features of Warrnambool’s calendar of racing every year, and many people go down to that. Jumps racing can be done very well. Overseas it has managed to go on for a really long time. They breed horses specifically for jumps racing, rather than try and turn some of them into jumps horses if they have failed at the gallops. But hearing the damage that that does—when you have somebody who is going to say, ‘Every year I’m going to turn up, and I’m going to do this and look at using drones and all sorts of different techniques to disrupt the horseracing’—I think that that is really quite disturbing.

If you have a look, I have a lot of racetracks in my office—none in my office, but plenty in my electorate. I have a lot of picnic tracks. I also have the track at Yarra Valley, which has the gallops and the harness racing, and I have dog tracks at Healesville. I have the greyhound track, a really great straight track at Healesville, which is one of the only ones without a bend in it, and it is particularly good. If you had people running onto the track or getting into unauthorised areas—there are lots of unauthorised areas, because you have the mounting yards as well as the tracks themselves, and people can get in there. You have the horses that are in the stalls, and if you go to the big race meetings, there are a lot of people in those areas, and it needs security to make sure that nobody interferes in any way with horses. I think you only need to go back to the times of Phar Lap and look at the demise and the death of Phar Lap and what happened in that instance—because somebody did get close to that animal and did interfere, and that was the end of what was a majestic horse who had done really well.

If I look at all of the picnic racetracks in my electorate, we have Mansfield, which has a couple of meets a year; Merton have their New Year’s Day one; Alexandra get a couple; Yea get a couple; and Healesville get a few. And it is actually interesting, because depending on the weather sometimes these events are rained out; sometimes at Healesville the river is up too high and it is flooded. But they bring so many people to the races, so many people, and it does a lot of benefit to the local economies. I implore the government in the short time that they have left to make sure that all of their members do understand that, because I am not convinced that around the cabinet table there are enough people who actually understand the benefits certainly of picnic racing—and of broader racing, but picnic racing does not seem to get the funding it deserves. People come from the city, they get in buses, they go up, they stay the weekend and they have a great time. And they do so much for the food and beverage catering, the accommodation. It really makes a big difference. I do not think that there are enough people around the current cabinet table that do understand that, because I see and I feel and I know others in the industry are very concerned that this picnic part of the racing is under threat, and I would hate that to be the case.

I am a strong supporter of picnic racing, and I am a strong supporter of racing. I go frequently to the races and certainly support that, and I do not think that people that disrupt it should get off lightly. They need to be penalised much more heavily than they have been in the past. I am pleased to see that the government has brought this bill forward, and with that I will complete my speeches for the year.

Ms GREEN (Yan Yean) (18:53): I am delighted. I did my valedictory speech earlier today, but I am really pleased to have a final contribution on the Racing Amendment (Unauthorised Access) Bill 2022. Racing has been one of my passions since I was a little girl. My grandmother Eileen Minnie May Plozza, nee Brady, with her Irish Catholic forebears was definitely very passionate about racing, as were many in my extended family. It really has been something that has driven us, and it was one of my connections to my grandmother. She taught me how to punt, she taught me how to play euchre, she taught me how to play five hundred and she taught me what was of value in our communities.

I was raised in Warrnambool, like the member for South-West Coast, and we both know how important the racing industry is to the south-west and to the whole west of Victoria. And that three-day race carnival in May has just been something that has been part of my life and my upbringing and part of the economic fabric of that community. Now with the Jericho Cup it really has grown, the interest in racing in the area. I have never been one that has been opposed to people having a say in our democratic society and being able to protest about things that they do not agree with, having worked at the Victorian Trades Hall Council, having been involved many times with rallies—as has the minister at the table, the Minister for Planning—which were about workers having their say about things that they thought were not right. But we always did that, the organised trade union movement did that, with respect to other workers and ensuring the safety of workers. Unfortunately what we have found sometimes in forestry protests and also the protests against the racing industry is that other workers have their rights trampled on and are actually endangered in the process. So this bill is important in relation to that.

The Victorian racing industry contributes $4.7 billion annually to the Victorian economy and helps sustain almost 35 000 full-time equivalent jobs across our state. The member for Eildon talked about picnic race meetings and cast a bit of a shadow over whether members in government are as committed to picnic race meetings as she might be. I could say to her that I am absolutely positive that is the case—that picnic race meetings and other race meetings are definitely supported by members of our government. I was pleased today to give my valedictory speech at the end of that part of the proceedings, but the lead speaker today in the valedictory contributions was the member for Keysborough and the former Minister for Racing. I share the passion that he has for our racing industry and I know that there are plenty more like him that are in the queue in our caucus and in our government.

In recent years there have been instances of unauthorised entry to a racetrack area during the running of horseraces at Victorian racecourses. While the frequency of track incursions by spectators is relatively low, the potential consequences are significant and could result in serious injury or death to patrons, human and animal participants, and officials.

I really want to congratulate Jamie Kah and the amazing number of female jockeys that are now participating in this great sport. I understand from a recent article I read about Jamie’s contribution that more than 50 per cent of apprentice jockeys are now female. I think that we need to be supporting gender equality in this sport and in fact celebrating that. I want to commend jockeys like Jamie Kah and others in the racing industry for what they do with horses after they have finished their racing life. Particularly if anyone has not read the recent—I believe it was in Good Weekend—article on Jamie Kah and the work that she does down on the Mornington Peninsula with former racehorses, it just shows that people like Jamie Kah and others involved in the industry, far from being disrespectful of animal welfare, are actually lovers of animal welfare.

I see the member for Gippsland East, a member of the National Party who sits in front of me, and we have a shared passion for racing, a shared passion for a punt. I am departing this place but I hope that I will see him out at a racetrack in the near future, and I will certainly be going to racetracks in the future with my husband. I commend this bill to the house.

The SPEAKER: The time set down for consideration of items on the government business program has arrived, and I am required to interrupt business. The house is considering the Racing Amendment (Unauthorised Access) Bill 2022. The question is:

That this bill be now read a second time.

House divided on motion:

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Third reading

Motion agreed to.

Read third time.

The SPEAKER: The bill will now be sent to the Legislative Council and their agreement requested.