Dr Adam Cawley is the Science Manager of the Australian Racing Forensic Laboratory (“ARFL”), the drug testing lab owned by Racing NSW that perhaps for reasons of efficiency, or coincidence, or not, lives at the same 51 Druitt Street Sydney address as both it owner, and of the peak gambling body Clubs NSW, which is on the floor above,
ARFL is an accredited testing laboratory that provides supposedly independent analytical testing services to racing codes in NSW. ARFL is responsible for the testing of prohibited and therapeutic substances in licensed racing.
In 2021 a solicitor named David Cleverley took a case against Harness NSW seeking that it released the results of all swab testing conducted at Menangle (and other tracks), on the presumed but not properly articulated (other than by 2 witnesses) basis that the tests were either not being conducted, or were being hooked.
Cleverley lost the case, mainly because he was poorly named and didn’t do it that way at all
That’s history.
It’s Adam Cawley’s evidence that we are interested in.
The ARFL and/or HRNSW had withheld the information sought by Cleverley – namely all the testing details and results- and in defense of the decision Cawley made the following claims that the documents pertaining to the test results contained information which:
(a) If made public, may be able to be used to compromise the integrity of, or circumvent, doping control; and
(b) Would disclose internal methods for the movement, tracking and storage of samples.
Cawley’s reasoning for (a) was that if he told people how the tests were done then they would know what methodologies and equipment were used by the ARFL on racing samples, and in what circumstances.
And?
Isn’t transparency of the process the whole point?
What’s wrong with people knowing how horses are tested for drugs, and why and when?
Surely in an environment in which broken down beasts like Boncel Benjamin are winning Inter Dominions, and hobby trainer cops like Joe Connolly are training 3 winners, a 2nd and a 5th (the last 3 in the same race) from 5 starters, it is absolutely in the public interest for everyone in racing to know:
(1) If their swab samples were actually tested
(2) How they were tested
(3) What they were tested for
Tell me what is wrong with any of that, other than otherwise very intelligent and successful men putting their faith in lawyers above thinkers trying to prove it, instead of the other way around?
In relation to (b), the internal methods for the movement, tracking and storage of samples, Adam Cawley claimed that – and I quote – in HRNSW were to begin making public the details of ARFL’s testing, storage and transfer procedures, then the ARFL would need to consider whether it may need to cease providing services to HRNSW.
Cawley reckoned that is because all clients of the ARFL, including in other codes of racing, rely on the confidentiality of the information for the effective regulation of drug use in their industries, including Racing NSW, which of course is, as we have already told you, the owner and operator of the ARFL.
Think about this for a second.
What the manager of the supposedly independent outfit that tests the swabs for its owners – who refuse to release any substantial information at all about the process or the results – is saying is that if we give solicitor Cleverley who is not the paperwork, all our clients will spit the dummy because their ongoing investigations will be compromised.
Have you ever hear a greater lot of shit in your life? All the ARFL would have to do is withhold the current results that are being done undercover and release all the rest, and then it would all be tickety-boo and Bob would be everyone’s uncle.
But instead we get this “Oh no we can’t release anything, because we are the Aussie racing version of the CIA or the KGB”, and the courts buy it.
Well actually, no they don’t.
A single tribunal member did.
Whoopee doo.
If Member Stephen ‘Stevo’ Montgomery who delivered the decision was a gun he’d be wearing robes and sitting on a bench like a number of my mates are, not wearing the same old frayed suit that he wore in private practice perched on a worn faux leather chair arbitrating on harness racing disputes. We are not quite talking Group 1 here. But the lawyer who is Cleverley but isn’t clever didn’t appeal, and aband0ned the case instead.
It was a shocking forensic decision in my view, but then I am not a lawyer, and in particular I am not one who didn’t particularize his case properly, so what the hell would I know? Just ask Jim Murdoch KC, he will tell you, just like I might tell you things too if I was working for the QRIC, or indeed for someone they might be trying to prosecute presently.
Anyway, the guts of it is that we are living in a world where we are expected to buy horses, feed them, pay for their training and driving, punt on them or just plain sit on the fence as a kid and believe that the whole sport is clean, while meanwhile claimers are winning Group 1’s and the authorities refuse to tell us when, where, how and why they were tested for drugs that might explain their massive improvements in form, or even tell us what drugs they were tested for and how the results turned out.
It’s a bit living in Wonderland isn’t it, except there’s no Alice.
You can read the whole Stevo decision here, hear, hear.
Just make sure you have a chuck bag handy, preferably one that’s technicolor rainbow.
https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/17c24e605cf2c1612a1b1a21