Dwyn

I thought the idea of the track closures was to sell the land, so whats the point in closing Phar Lap when it is DOC land and can't be sold 

You are right the trainers association have been weak as piss...some on here have voiced their strong discontent only to be in a minority..they deserve what they get IMO...no balls to stand up for themselves then they deserve everything that gets thrown at them.
As I said I won't be racing any after these ones in NZ again.

Obviously the Aussie's don't go along with the notion that fields and form in newspapers is now past its time.  Most city papers have pages of fields and form analysis.
Maybe that is one reason why their betting per person is 150% higher than in NZ?

Sadly we only ever seem to get their cast offs sent here...and they just milk the system..yes Australian racing is in a different league to here but it is also starting face head winds too....ours is facing a windy Wellington Gale.

Nobody wants the AW tracks its another dinosaur...you wait till horses start breaking down left right and centre...and they will I have seen first hand what happens on these BS tracks....They should have gone with Strathayr and had world class tracks that punters love...but no they went the dumb way as normal.
 

Madness.
The clean out should start at the top and work out from there not the other way around. A further retrenching of racing away from the public. Instead of promoting racing and trying to attract people this action will only lead to further alienation of the customers that are left and further erosion of turnover (the opposite of what is needed).  
   

What a bunch of FUCKIN MORONS!
Run by suits on hundreds of thousands of dollars who keep their jobs the useless greedy C##TS!

Wall To Wall Racing is the last thing the Industry needs! LESS IS MORE YOU MUPPET'S !

They obviously don't regard us as a sport but believe we all have gambling addictions instead. Two flies up a wall anyone???

I am pissed off at this approach to say the least!
NZ RACING run by Non racing Suits with no idea! F###WITS!

Not really the people that caused the problems that are getting the boot is it. Typical I suppose.

If Winston's got any gumption sack the lot,reapply new salaries, new radio I tv channel start again we survived without tv but radio that's different,maybe a time to can sky as well not sure

No Radio Trackside, ridiculous, they have made a right royal job this mob of fucking NZ Racing.....

https://www.lincolnfarms.co.nz/stories/what-happened-to-the-tabs-halcyon-days-an-a-to-z-of-what-brought-racing-to-its-knees/

The real issues are two fold in respect of staff losses. The first is that under a new look regime and protocol, what staff are not needed on voyage? Horrible thing to say as we're discussing people's lives but there are some resources that simply don't have a place going forward. 
The second is the cretins further up the food chain who feather their own political nests in order to hold onto their positions but their lack of skill completely justifies letting them go at this time. It is this group that I think is the most important as they generally are the highest paid and the most ineffective. 
Whoever signed the agreement in relation to the FOB platform probably needs to go. Whoever has been running Trackside needs to go. Whoever has been responsible for the creation of the presentation for the racing data probably needs to go. Who ever was responsible for employing these three people probably needs to go.
I would run a very simple exercise right now while RITA has the opportunity. I would ask all the senior staff to independently submit a plan in their own department as to how they would run their departments with 50% of the people and what would I be receiving for that. I would then ask them to submit plans for how everyone else would run their departments (including my own), if they felt something was run badly. Let everyone know that all submissions are confidential so that fingers could be pointed if required, without later recourse.
Get everyone to do it and you would quickly know which ones to keep.

Till the leak is fixed the less money put in the less that can be wasted.

I think the reason many in the industry don't want to see Avondale sold, and aren't too keen on a govt handout, is because they know any windfall will just be pissed up against the wall by this lot and in less than a year or two we will be in an even worst position with nothing left to sell.

Just read Robbie Patterson write up on love racing saying how it's about time we where racing for minimum stakes of $15000 . He said his owners beaming over it. The only ones beaming are maiden runners who get an increase while others cut in half. Think he missed the boat before it started sinking.

There just seems total inertia in racing to any ideas outside the established protocols. 
Take Avondale for example. Basically its a lost cause yet the land extremely valuable. North of Auckland and also west there has been massive development plus an influx of populace. A significant percentage of NZ population. Surrounding that many livestyle blocks certainly suitable for owner trainer settups. Yet devoid of any racetrack.
I'm not saying there is suitable land for a racetrack. All i'm saying the club and NZ racing hierarchy has made no effort to find out. Maybe Dairy Flat could be OK i don't know.  But selling Avondale and reinvesting into a viable racing and/or training complex deserves some consideration. Instead all racing officials have been lulled into reliance on the gambling dollar which is becoming scarce.
As for Cambridge most meeting cancellations occur for reasons which cannot be circumvented. Even if its because of weather or flooding then the Cambridge meeting won't be very appealing anyway. With an abundance of racecourses in NZ the spending on Cambridge hardly justified.

Sadly we sold the Trainers Association down the road when we linked up with NZTR......

And - another example- the Cambridge allweather ?  A profligate waster of money with no apparent awareness that the gravy boat was empty?

The problem was that Messara reported what the suits wanted him to , he just followed the arrows they had put in place so they would get the required result that suited their own ends . When you can just drive through a race course without stopping to interact and peruse the facilities , then recommend closure then you are following a pre ordained script . The suits certainly didn't place any arrows that pointed in their direction , hence no review of their management . 

This report from John Messara, did the working of this investigation include a comprehensive financial audit of the racing industry including TAB or was it more of a philosophical musing? Is this available for reading?
I'm still completely blown away by the amount of money the RIU takes to operate. I didn't think racing in NZ was necessarily losing millions to underworld activity, money laundering or large scale doping programmes before they came into existence? There's a few conflicts of interests on the business side but hardly anything which requires a FBI for racing. 

I agree Dean is very capable and knows his stuff. My criticism of RITA is lack of communication when the industry most needs to hear from them.  
 
How other people run their business is their business. RITA is a government business and is accountable to its stakeholders. Tell us how much sh1t it is in, so we know and can make informed decisions re our horses. 

This may be a dumb question, but I'll ask it all the same. Each code was given a distribution to cover all racing for the 2019/2020 season. These funds were to cover 12 months of racing. We haven't raced for 6 weeks or so and it will be another month for Harness Racing to start and another 2 months for Thoroughbred racing. What has happened to the stakes distribution paid out to cover these periods, 14 weeks stakes money for Standardbreds and 18 weeks for Thoroughbreds                  

That was not a good interview for all of us. All it tells you is that RITA is swimming in quick sand. There are no long terms strategies on offer. With a $26m weekly turnover (amased it was that big) they are still losing money, which means that IF they are getting a 5.00% gross, then they are churning $1.15m or $50m pa and Dean says that they're still not making money. If the churn is less than 5.00% then the rebate program, or the odds setter isn't appropriate for the times. 
I'm struggling to come to grips with all of this. What has happened in many other businesses during this shitty period is that many have been able to push reset buttons. We historically have created dead wood for ourselves, and once accumulated, can't get rid of it. In my way of thinking this industry has two major short term matters which could be reset the button issues. The first is that monkey of a outsourcing agreement with Open Bet/ Paddy Power where allegedly an annual payment of $17m needs to be made for the FOB platform. On a 5.00% churn, that equates to having to generate $350m of turnover to pay for its outsourcing, let alone the amortisation of the financial outlay and operations.
Talking with Peter Vela yesterday, he offered that the platform was operating very well and fulfilling all expectations. As we were talking on other matters, I did not want to comment on the punters response to it, the fact that some of its functionality left a lot to be desired, the odds making mechanism is a standardised protocol that makes the FOB platform one of hundreds in the market, the inability to become an international bet offering entity due to jurisdictional licensing constraints , and the problems associated with lack of content that requires extensive content agreements to be able to offer the betting content in the first place.
The second financial matter is the current employment contracts with personnel. IF I had a company that was under severe duress, as are many companies at the moment, I would use this period of time to restructure my contracts. This doesn't mean that I'm not conscious of the fact that we are talking about human beings lives. But we are now talking the lives of 500 people versus 30,000. In the group of the 500, there are two categories. The first are those that aren't needed any longer and the second is those that are, are they being paid too much under the circumstances? We have after all had a reset of life as we have known it and I would argue that even in good times, the contracts that have been drawn up by the previous TAB mob, were, and still are overly generous.
So why don't our leaders take this opportunity to reset the bar? Place the TAB in statutory management, make all the current contracts null in-void and renegotiate everything to a satisfactory level. IF the TAB is losing money (and that's what Dean said it was), and it banking covenants have been breached, and there is little scope to convensionally fund the  business, then it is technically insolvent. The only thing that would not determine this route is if the directors have an expectation that the business could secure funds to keep it financially propped up. Prior to the Covid issue, RITA went to the government for a circa $20m hand out to attempt to get its house in order. This has ballooned to $80m, and by Peter's own admission, this might be light. 
So I'm seriously screwed in my head as to how all of this might fit together. You guys happy to have a further $80m monkey around your necks? That would make it circa $120m!!!  So let's do the sums on the assumptions that the current handout is actually half of the currently needed handout....$40m plus the current train wreck of $40m debt = $80m. Let's say that we get these funds at 5.00% (and that would be seriously low for a company under duress). Let's say that on Dean's admission that right now we're not making money at $26m weekly turnover, so that means $1m costs per week but this may be greater. And then we've got that horrid $17m pa for the FOB platform ($8.5m for 6 months). Now the $80m is current debt which leaves $40m to prop everything up because betting isn't there until betting content becomes available. When is Rugby going to start? Unknown....Soccer?....Unknown.
So let's look at this $40m to prop everything up. Say we are tracking $20m of costs that are needed because we've lost the pokie machine money. That means the $9m needed to pay for 90 people in the RIU is gone plus $8.5m for FOB platform. So that $20m is gone...leaves us with $20m. So lets say that 50% goes to racing, 30% to trots and 20% to grey hounds....oh shit...I forgot about sports....
So $10m goes to racing, $5m are NZTR costs.....that leaves $5m. I reckon sponsorship is close to zero because people can't go to the races for the next 3 months. So let's say things are bad for the next  2 months, and getting racing going in 3 months, and being 50% of what it normally is in 6 months (Christmas). So that's $5m over 3 months with 3 meetings per week (that looks to be the NZTR proposition) with 8 races per meeting = 24 races per week = 96 races per month = 288 races in that 3 month period = $17,000 per race. This of course doesn't take into account race track costs. So during that time we have 70 group or listed stakes races. Let's just say that each of these need to be at least $50,000 average (remember the 1000 and 2000 Guineas are currently $750k between them) = $3.5m. So We've got $5m, we take $3.5m of that for black type (BT) races so we've got 288 races minus 70 BT races = 218 races sharing $5m minus $3.5m = $1.5m. Divide that up between 218 races and you get $6,800 races. 
You do realise that this is the back of napkin stuff but it sort of gives you an idea of the issues facing us.
So after 15 years of mismanagement, we are where we are. Do we take the opportunity to get our house in order....right now....go strong...be hard....or do we meander our way through this to be beholden to the legacy of the past and the potential of what we could achieve right now....for the benefit of the future?

Why?     Tells us nothing that we haven't already been told,  and at no point does he acknowedge that it is NOT Covid-19 to blame for all the TAB's woes.

Last thing , as for racing , yet again your lack of understanding of the big picture . The damage to racing has been done over the last couple of decades , the last straw has been happening for people that long . Every year people have gone that's the last straw for them and their out . More people have got out of racing in the last 10 years than are presently still in it . Don't try and lump this on Labour as well we had 9 with your buddies in charge and more damage was done in that time than any other .