Sam Natis Comments on Sky Sports Radio

[mango]

Drop in mare's being bred every year - Due to higher cost's involved

Stallion number's dropping - there are a low percentage of stallion's that are fully booked so there's enough to select from if you want to breed.

Australian studmasters miss out - a lot of our imports are by Aussie based stallion's.

Kiwi horses - we need full fields for turnover and I believe we need to keep them coming for this reason.

At the present time there are so many mare's that people are trying to off load as they have know interest in breeding so number's will keep falling, there is know quick fix to this problem.

Buying going horses - kiwi's are seller's and will sell anything and everything where Aussie's tend to hold onto there horses.

[Sofoulis]

This fee is to recover the administration cost of transferring the horses (per the HRA announcement and my previous discussion with HRA when this was released):
"Whilst the import fee is attached to the administrative service provided for the clearance it is anticipated that additional funds raised will be utilised with initiatives to support the Australian breeding industry."

I am wondering if the Australian breeders could assist me with breeding someone to work at HRA - because if it costs them $2,200 in administration fees to transfer these horses, I can only imagine what the hourly wage is of the administration staff.

The reasons that HRA said this is because, in my view, if they did not, they would be in contravention of the free trade arrangements between Aus and NZ:

"Free trade is a policy by which a government does not discriminate against imports or interfere with exports by applying tariffs (to imports) or subsidies (to exports) or quotas."
"Australia and NZ have had a free trade agreement in place since 1983."
(thanks Wikipedia).

I question whether this will actually help the local breeding industry:
- Scenario 1: less imports, less racing, less chances for locally bred horses to race and earn
- Scenario 2: cheaper imports, lower quality racing, lower quality breeding requirements in Australia to be competitive, less people interest in the product, less racing, less chances for locally bred horses to race and earn
- Scenario 3: cheaper imports, lower quality racing, less people interested in the product, less racing, less chances for locally bred horses to race and earn
- Scenario 4: only expensive NZ imports (as fee is immaterial), easier base racing, lower quality breeding in Australia to win base races, high-staked races won by NZ horses........
(many other scenarios)

I do see some merit in Jack's idea.

Contrary to what Sam says, this has impacted my buying decisions over the past 5 months and will continue to (and it has not encouraged me to buy more local horses, my mix of local/NZ horses is the same).

[Boydy]

As an owner over the last 6 months I have been involved in purchase of 4 NZers, 1 before the fee increase and 3 subsequent. One of them was a 5yo mare and the two others were 4yo mares, infact I paid the $1650 for a transfer this morning. With these horses there have been 4 new owners introduced to the industry that otherwise would not have been. I agree with Jack that in particular people that have not been exposed to harness racing, buying up and going horses and syndicating them is the only way to go. Trying to buy Australian horses at a reasonable price is almost impossible. The kiwis definitely seem more willing to sell at a reasonable price. I have personally been involved with the breeding of 3 horses (2 raced, 1 a yearling) and to be honest it is a very long and expensive process and for all the costs the first two anyway have been disappointing.

At present I am a bit of a quandry as the 2 mares that have raced in Australia, one is a half sister to a New Zealand cup winner and the other is by far the fastest horse I have ever owned. I really would like to bred with them but the reality by the time the offspring are ready to race it will be 3-4 years and $35k later. It alot of expense and time to be potentially disappointed. If I buy an up and going horse the horse will be racing with a month.

I think Jacks idea is a great one with regards the person paying the fee gets the credit to spend on breeding etc in Australia. That way the person actually spending the money on horses gets rewarded. It would make my decision with regards breeding easy to make. However I think the biggest issue with breeding in general is stallion fees. I know the studs will say that people are willing to pay the $12k + for the Mach 3, Bettors and Art Majors etc, but considering the prizemoney and the cost of getting a horse to the races I know for sure this is turning people of breeding their own horses.

Adam, maybe we need to take out a group action against HRA as they are in breech of the free trade agreement.

I also heard Sam Nati talking about the meeting last week and he made mention of last Saturday night having nearly all full fields because of the Where Horses Fly Finals. My understanding is this is funded by Menangle not HRNSW so all credit should go to John Dumesny and his team get credit for that.

I can say that the import fee has definitely affected my decision making process and at least one additional purchase has been stopped because of the import fee.

[gutwagon]

So Boydy, your plan is to keep taking money from the Australian industry and send it to NZ !
You don't have to send your mares to the most expensive stallions. There are plenty of good ones under $5000 around.
I'm glad to hear that the fee stoped at least one horse coming.

[Boydy]

Rick, by buying horses and bringing them to Australia I am actually contributing to the Australian industry.

When I pay my $1000 a month training fees I am contributing to a whole raft of people who depend on me to continue their employment in the industry. Not to mention everytime my horses race people invest money on them and this is the main contributor to the harness racing industry. The fields at Menangle would have looked a little bare if only the 33 Australian bred horses were able to compete. The betting turnover would have been a little poor with 7 races with 5 starters in each.

Whats next impose a import fee on imported semen to protect local breeders. Not to mention the majority of the leading sires in this country are owned by syndicates that mostly live overseas. Should we also place a fee on the use of these foreign owned stallions?

The rationale that by buying a horse from overseas is taking anything away from the Australian industry is just plain wrong and is propaganda from the local breeding industry. Especially when you have breeding conglomerates like Alabar that having stallions on either side of the ditch who truly knows where the money is going anyway.

[mightymo]

I also really likes Jack's idea of the import fee being able to be used against service fees or purchasing a yearling. I think its got a lot of merit

[gutwagon]

Boydy, as I said in my first post, people that buy or sell NZ horses wont like the fee. We would still get full fields without the NZ horses, there are usually many horses that miss out on each race. And it would encourage people to buy and breed more horses in Australia. If you took away the NZ horses overnight then we would struggle for a few years, but nobody is suggesting that. We just want to slow them down a bit and let the Australian industry recover.
If you spend $50,000 on an NZ horse then that's $50,000 going to NZ breeders and studmasters . That's money gone from the Australian industry. So you think that if people couldn't buy NZ horses they wouldn't buy any horses ! I find that hard to believe.
In my experience the cheapest way to get involved in the sport is to breed your own horses, yes it involves patience and some homework but its the cheapest way.

[gutwagon]

I find it strange that people aren't complaining about all those races at Menangle that are restricted to horses that are trained by NSW trainers within 100klm of Menangle. And must have been trained by them for 28 days prior to the race. This is deliberately aimed at keeping the money in the state. I wish HRV would bring in similar races to keep interstate horses away.

[Messenger]

Boydy, as I said in my first post, people that buy or sell NZ horses wont like the fee. We would still get full fields without the NZ horses, there are usually many horses that miss out on each race. And it would encourage people to buy and breed more horses in Australia. If you took away the NZ horses overnight then we would struggle for a few years, but nobody is suggesting that. We just want to slow them down a bit and let the Australian industry recover.
If you spend $50,000 on an NZ horse then that's $50,000 going to NZ breeders and studmasters . That's money gone from the Australian industry. So you think that if people couldn't buy NZ horses they wouldn't buy any horses ! I find that hard to believe.
In my experience the cheapest way to get involved in the sport is to breed your own horses, yes it involves patience and some homework but its the cheapest way.

I won't argue whether it is the cheapest I will just point out that it is the least likely way to get a horse to race. It would also have to be a syndicator's worst job - Roll up, Roll up people, Give me your money for a couple of years and you MIGHT get a horse to race!

[Boydy]

Rick, as I have said previously I have bred horses in the past and the reality is most people do not have the luxury of keeping a couple of horses in the back paddock. I personally live a couple of kilometres from Harold Park and my only way of breeding is to keep the horses at a stud. The average cost for a broodmare is $250 per month or $3000 per year. For example the first mare I bred, slipped the foal year one, year two in foal, year 3 did not put the mare back in foal to see how the first one developed, year 4 back into foal. The reality was the first foal cost me $9000 and this did not include the service fee (approx $5000 from memory), foaling fee, transport, insemination fee etc etc etc. So the yearling probably cost me about $20k before breaking in, pretraining etc.

From my perspective this is not a cheap way to do it. Considering the 4 horses I have bought were between $NZ9-12k plus $5k transport this is a much more economical way for me to get my harness racing fix.

The question is, are all the breeders going to purchase more broodmares and put them into foal this year because of this import fee? It will be interesting to see but I doubt it but if you want to stop the horses from NZ you need to replace them with something.

As for VVV saying that buyers will demand a drop in the price due to the fee I think the reverse happens now when trying to buy a horse in Australia. If you have a horse with any ability, remembering a horse getting trained in Australia needs to win a minimum of $14k a season just to pay the bills, the seller factors in the kiwi alternmative will cost $7k (Transport + import fee) the prices are hugely inflated. Or maybe people really don't want to sell the horse locally to show that another trainer can improve it.

I think harness racing really nedds to look at the big picture and look at places like Hong Kong. Arguably the greatest racing indusrty in the world or definitely the most profitable. The last thing on their mind is the local bredding industry. Try to get the best horses and competitive racing and in turn the people and the money comes. 40 years ago when they were racing their ponies around a paddock who would have thought?

For the hobby breeder like myself, for every one that is successful one there are 20 that fail and give up.

As I said before I personally do not think that the import fee will have any impact on the numbers of horse bred, but it will definitely have an impact on the numbers of horses available to race in Australia. The nominations for next Tuesdays meeting that I saw this week were pathetic.

As for the 100km rule race for Menangle, Rick I think they are a fantastic idea. I really think HRNSW should consider other race conditions in an attempt to lure horses that do not target Menangle. I have seen races in NZ with special conditions like 5yo+ with 1-3 wins with heats and finals worth good money (say $15k) are a great idea to try and get a return for battling owners. I still can't believe that every state in Australia and NZ regularly run claimers and we can't get them going with the result these older horses being shipped interstate and effectively robbing our local pool of horses.

Anything that discourages people from getting involved in harness racing and increasing costs for owners is at the detriment of the sport. Don't even get me started on the $77 scratching fee for horse as this is ridiculous.