The answer to Chris' original question is nil.

The government had nothing to do with the split so it is hardly going to act in our favour. We signed for it anyway. And Percy Allan got legal advice about it - how good that was I do not know.

More to the point is the lousy 10% of tax harmonisation, which considered everything but turnover figures, thereby denying common sense and the normal economic incentive to reward good doers. That is one of several things which should have been challenged but was not. That was Grant's work but supported by Newson (ie hardly dealing in favour of the organisation he signed up for - GRNSW).

But - shock, horror - Steve, what are you doing claiming that the one million is coming in part from the taxpayers? You have let the side down. It is coming from unclaimed TAB dividend funds - ie punters - which gov/Minister can deal out as they wish (more or less).

So Bruce your telling Chris Steve & myself that if the SFF Party get the balance of power that the ICA cant be changed???

More to the point,, The agreement discriminates against the greyhound code, is unfair and with little benefit to the industry. Totally in breach of Contract Law. The legal advice Percy got has as much value as the horse sh*t stuck to V'Landys Boots.

You must deal with the facts, not the emotion.

The agreement had four signatories - the TAB and the three codes. The government was not involved.

I have spoken to someone who was there. At the time, they thought 13% was OK, mainly because it was a small improvement on the existing greyhound turnover and it offered a seemingly reliable base for the future.

Subsequently, various greyhound administrations have added races beyond the guarantee (to the TAB) level, thereby with the full knowledge that they would not get the full dollar for them, most recently in 2010. (This also included the short equine influenza episode).

All this has been happening in an environment where the other two codes have been losing ground relatively - predominantly to other forms of gambling. Greyhounds were the exception but it amounted to profitless prosperity - more races, less commission.

To a small extent, the greyhound burden has been eased by the arrival and growth of corporate bookies. Their turnover is outside the ICA area although it has been at somewhat lower rates compared to the TAB.

The ICA was signed willingly by GRA, a completely legal party, albeit at the urging of GBOTA/NCA (according to evidence under oath). No doubt, this would have been the background to the legal advice to Allan. It is neither discrimination nor a breach of any law.

More current appeals to government were made in the hope that other financial decisions (eg on tax parity) would recognise the imbalance and therefore help sort out the problem. This was always wishful thinking, especially when Troy Grant was in charge.

In total, greyhounds have committed suicide three times: once by agreeing to an inflexible contract, second by agreeing to a nonsensical 99 year life, and third by increasing activity (beyond the 500 races) without renegotiating the contracted payout. Any one of these would have gotten a commercial company board thrown out on its ear.

One remedy - quickly noted by the incoming Paul Newson - was that viability could be achieved only by radical surgery. Hence the thinking which led to proposed reductions in races so that income and expenditure could more or less be matched. In general, that picture is still there but is being disguised somewhat by the government's $41m grants.

However, that attends only to capital accounts in the short/medium term, not to annual profit and loss. At the core, NSW greyhound racing would appear to be unviable under existing conditions. That is, we don't have the cash to pay our bills, especially when overhead costs are rising (GRNSW/GWIC staff and new regulations)and participants' expenses are going up as well.

To make matters worse, there is not, and never has been, any real attempt by the controlling authority (and some clubs) to create and market a product that would attract fresh customers, thereby helping that profit and loss account (Note - Newson also failed to address this shortcoming).

The real remedy, in fact the only remedy, is to recognise that the system is broken and need replacement. Only a fully commercialised business would have any hope of getting out of the hole its predecessors have dug.

Other states? Well, yes, they suffer from comparable diseases but the doctors (governments) have supplied pills to keep them alive and they don't have the same burden of obligated race numbers or 99 year crook deals. Plus, all have benefitted from changes to commission shares to one degree or another.

Or, to put it another way, except for Victoria and perhaps WA to some extent, they pay smaller prizes - ie they have cut their cloth to suit. Effectively, that's what Newson said was necessary in NSW. Abuse him all you like but he wasn't wrong on this.

Certainly, there are many other aspects of the industry which warrant investigation and review, but if you can't sort out he viability question nothing much matters. You would be building a house of cards.

I wish you were right but you're not.

"Unconscionable conduct" or conditions might be due cause but not where we willingly and knowingly signed up for it both at the time and often since.

Those guys carefully mulled it over and then still signed up!

What they did not do is to renegotiate the conditions later on when race numbers increased. They had some leverage then but just blasted on regardless. That's incompetence.

Mick,

Yes.

Grant,

Facts, please.

All board members are "government appointees". What you may mean is that he was previously a public servant (Treasury).

I have been highly critical of Percy (as was McHugh) but he was also the instigator of the Fair Share appeal to government, which gives him a couple of brownie points.

The "revisiting" clause (at 15 years) is there but it would be practical only if all the parties agreed to changes. It has been and they didn't agree.

I would be delighted to find good reason to challenge it legally but so far no-one has. What is "best for NSW" greyhounds unfortunately has nothing to do with the exercise.

The industry is lumbered with a dumb agreement and has done dumb things about it since. So you have no choice but to accept it and move on.

Inevitably, that will involve a smaller industry because the funds are not available to do anything else. The only vague possibility would be to generate a huge increase in revenue from non-TAB areas which are then out of reach of the ICA. Good luck finding someone in GRNSW who might do that. A genuine entrepreneur might have a chance but how would you get one to replace Iemma and Mestrov? And, if so, would you put up with the radical action he might want to take.

Having said that, there may well be reason or cause to attack the 99 year life of the ICA. By any measure, that is plainly ridiculous. But there is no foreseeable chance of addressing the 13% figure.

Mick,

I thought I already had.

1. The ICA has nothing to do with government. The only parties to the document were the TAB and the three codes. Also, GRA had GBOTA and NCA by its side.
2. The agreement was made willingly and after due consideration.
3. Not really relevant, but the dogs thought it was fair enough as it tended to offer a bigger percentage than they had been getting at that time.
4. There was/is provision for change providing only that the parties agreed. They did not.
5. Any more recent efforts were more along the lines of encouraging government to offer the dogs a bonus in other areas - ie to make up for the claimed shortfall. That never happened. In fact Troy Grant did the reverse with the tax parity - ie not 13% or 20% but 10%.
6. The decision in (5) might well have been challenged in some forum but was not. In fact, Newson supported it. As he was the board and the CEO at the time he had full authority to do that. You might well argue that he was not correctly pursuing his implied duty to the dogs but it's a bit late for that now, isn't it? (Although I wrote in that vein at the time).
7. Since the signing of the agreement and the later review the dogs have had ample opportunity to take various actions to push for a better outcome - eg when increasing annual race numbers or when helping out the TAB and the other two codes during the equine influenza saga. They failed to do so, thereby implying that they were satisfied with the status quo and that they were happy to accept fewer cents out of every dollar.
8. Borsak would have been aware of most or all of this during and since his chairmanship of the Parliamentary Inquiry which is why he concluded the dogs were in a poor financial position and called on government to intervene. However, that is no more than a political statement. So was Percy Allan's appeal for a "Fair Share". Neither has any bearing on the legal position.
9. Various people, including QCs, have tried to go down the road to a genuine review. Apparently, none has found a way through. V'Landys remains in charge.
10. The only avenue I can think would involve a long and protracted PR campaign to shame the gallops into stopping the cross-subsidy from the greyhounds - ie change the agreement. For example, you might take out an ad every week or month detailing how much cash was being donated to the gallops. You won't get thru the V'Landys hide but you might influence the thinking of more fair minded people in that code or in the public area.
11. I suspect there is some recognition in government that it overstepped the mark during the Baird era - hence its grant of $41m to help with track layouts etc. But that still has nothing to do with the ICA.

In summary, there are legal, managerial and PR/political issues in play. "Legal" is fixed, "managerial" is water under the bridge, "PR" is the only hope but a meagre one.

If you are being dudded, the trick is to scream your head off at the time, not 18 years later. Which is why I keep suggesting that participants have to watch every step taken by the government or the authority.

If I can put it another way, the referee goofed but the match is over and it will not be replayed.

Quote from the Upper House Enquiry

Mr Hogan observed that the Cameron report had anticipated that it may be difficult to obtain voluntary changes from the racing codes and had recommended that in such circumstances the Government should intervene and override the inter-code agreement.

Cameron then went further and said that if that is the case, then the Government needed to stand ready to intervene and if necessary by legislation ensure that those arrangements moved to a fair and equitable basis for distribution; that is, on performance not based on some historical percentage, which at this stage would be in place for 100 years.

Almost every man and his dog have complained about the inequity of the ICA - including Minister Face not too long ago (he supported Cameron).

Yet succeeding governments of both colours have declined to act. Why?

The answer is substantially because the law of the land underpins contracts. Without that solidity, society would be a shambles.

If you sign for a fixed 4% mortgage on your house you have no hope of going to the bank and demanding 3%. You should have gone for a variable rate to start with, but you didn't. Bad luck.

Yes, there are some protections against improper devices - banks charging for services not rendered is one example - but none of those are relevant to a contract willingly signed. You can't legislate against stupidity.

Apart from that, there are the intangible aspects; some government people don't like greyhounds (guess who); the broad public is by no means strongly in favour of greyhound racing - quite the opposite; the big end of town (the gallops) is not impressed; minority votes (Greens) can be important in some circumstances - as they were in winning the ACT election; the greyhound industry has a worrying habit of blotting its copybook at regular intervals; despite protestations, racing authorities are subject to government arm-twisting; and so on and so forth.

Borsak and others will be helpful but only at the fringes.

One of the underlying problems in this area is that we are talking about managers who are playing with other people's money yet with relatively little risk of being sanctioned if they choose the wrong road. At the worst, they will be replaced rather than sued or fined, but then only when something really illegal or publicly embarrassing happens. Mostly, inefficiencies will be ignored, or not even noted. In contrast, shareholders in a public company would soon throw them out on their ear.

In clubland, directors are not even paid but that may mean you are getting your money's worth. How else could you justify $31m of government money to fix up a long string of poor tracks when many of the jobs should have been attended to by the club itself?

The industry has long since outgrown its amateur years yet is persevering with a structure that cannot keep up with the outside world. So change it!

A platoon of QCs do not agree with you.

Cheers

That's because they are a part of the corrupt system that has bluffed the majority of Australians.