Racing Victoria remind me of the kid who packs his bat and ball up when you bowl him middle stump in a game of backyard cricket and runs home to mummy and says Mama those boys are mean.
Or they would if it were not for one thing.
We are not playing in the back yard here, we are playing big money, highly regulated professional sport, and such games are played by the rules.
In the case of the 2% of prizemoney paid to strappers by Racing NSW and no-one else, we are playing by the local rules, and as you can see above they are very clear.
Only licensed stable hands resident in NSW, who are engaged by trainers licensed by Racing NSW with permanent stabling in NSW, and who are paid minimum award wages for 4 hours a week or more, are eligible to be paid the 2% if horses in their stable win.
This is not a new rule, it has been in force for a long time.
So for Racing Victoria to try and use it as a blunt tool to bash the man they can’t beat by playing fair Peter V’Landys is an absolute disgrace.
It also shows how shallow and dishonest the Victorians truly are.
In the story they fed directly to their mate at the Australian Financial Review and then republished on it’s own website racing.com, RV have deliberately misrepresented the entire position in regard to the payment of the 2%.
For a start it is not a strapper’s bonus as RV claim at all.
It is a payment to all qualifying stablehand’s who work for the barn that wins a race.
The strapper of the horse on the day doesn’t get it; the payment is split across all qualifying staff at the stable, on a pro-rata basis to how many hours they work.
So to suggest, or indeed declare, that Victorian strappers of winners are being denied huge bonuses as Racing Victoria have is simply incorrect, and it is utterly dishonest too.
It brings no credit upon the toffs from the south at all, but draws plenty the other way.
1. A licensed Staff members’ entitlement will be calculated on a pro-rata basis of hours worked, calculated as a percentage of total licensed Staff hours for that Trainer for the Quarter. With that information, 2% of the total prizemoney earned by the Stable or the Quarter will be divided accordingly.
Secondly, the staff of interstate trainers who fly in and fly out to win rich races in NSW – or indeed any race at all – are not eligible to collect the payments.
Racing NSW applies strict criteria to which trainers – and by extension stable staff – qualify to get the payments.
There are the criteria RNSW applies:
2. Racing NSW looks at the Racing Business conducted in NSW when considering whether trainers maintain a permanent stable. Some of the factors considered include:
– The number of boxes owned/ leased in NSW
– The number of horses stabled in NSW that are raced monthly in NSW
– Trainer or Foreman is a NSW resident
– The number of employed staff in NSW stables
– Overall substance of the Racing Business conducted in NSW including a demonstrated commitment to Thoroughbred Racing in NSW for over 12 months
Do you see how a strapper of a single horse from an interstate or overseas stable is not eligible for the payment?
If you don’t, then my suggestion is that you make an urgent appointment with your optometrist.
The fact is that this bonus payment was introduced and applied by Racing NSW for two purposes. One was to reward the low paid, hard working stable staff who toil hard every day to work with trainers to
Thirdly, the following statement by the multi millionaire plumbing supplies magnate Jonathon Munz – the 54th richest person in Australia – is simply hypocrisy in the extreme.
I told Peter his policy was nuts – in my view it is fundamentally improper and unfair. You can’t treat a worker differently for doing the same work in NSW, just because they live in Victoria.
Really?
Maybe not when you have them on under award expired Enterprise Agreement I guess, but Mr Munz fails to acknowledge that under the Constitution of Australia the States have control of racing, and can do whatever they like. And that Peter V’Landys and his board do it very, very well.
Let me a tell you a little bit about this pretend do-gooder Munz.
He is worth a fortune, and could pay a ‘strappers bonus’ out of his loose change, but he chooses not to, because you don’t get rich spending your own money, you roll in it by getting others to pay what you mistakenly – but obviously quite genuinely – believe is due and owing. And, in the case of Munz, you do it at the expense of a mighty worthy cause like the fund for financial assistance and welfare payments for stablehands and trainers where it would otherwise go.
That’s terrible behavior by Munz in my opinion, but it’s absolutely no surprise.
After all, this is the bloke who ten years ago when money was worth less spent 1o times the ‘strappers bonus’ for Giga Kick’s win in The Everest on taking the ATO to the Federal Court to try to get them to allow $42.5 million in tax deductions from the big race lover’s horse business GSA Bloodstock, so that he could apply the 42.mil as tax losses across his uber-profitable plumbing supplies businesses, and effectively race tens of millions of dollars worth of racehorses for free.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/racehorse-owners-to-fight-tax-office-crackdown-20131207-2yy25.html
Yeah, that’s him.
I wonder how many 2 percent slings Munz has ever paid to his stable staff when his horses win?
About the same number that Racing Victoria have paid I reckon.
There does not seem anything fair about denying racing’s poorest paid workers a life changing amount of money because of politics or your postcode cries Racing Victoria’s ventriloquist dummy Paul Tatnell, whose once glittering career in the journalism game long ago crashed and burned.
Tatts is right too, just like he’s wrong.
It isn’t fair mate, but life isn’t either.
What do think about the Ukraine?
In my opinion the blue and golds are the good guys, but I wouldn’t like to meet any of them in a dark alley, even the women.
What’s happening to them ain’t fair, but it’s happening, and it’s happening because lawful and legal sovereign borders are sacrosanct, and are worth fighting for, all the way to the end.
So postcodes and politics do matter Mr Munz.
And if a poor racing stable worker doesn’t want to be one any more, all they need to do is move to Sydney.
That or beg you for a loan.
I could go on forever about Racing Victoria’s perfidy, but why waste your time and breath.
It’s much better spent doing the Doncaster form, and plotting with your mates about pooling enough dough to get to the Derby.
https://rego.racingnsw.com.au/Stablehands-Payments-TC.pdf?1