The ASBP Report: How can they be serious? Bad news for harness owners

[Midfrew]

Let me declare an interest straight up: an NZ breeder, owner and I love racing. Winning is everything! Also member NZ Breeders Assn.

Why is it that a culture has been created in Australia in the last 20 years (i.e. thanks to Johnnie Howard and the current one paying lump sums of $5k here and $10k there to buy votes, to bred babies, to buy houses, to fund dodgy insulation schemes (that killed people without any real questioning)) etc etc that someone else has to pay for other people's bad decisions. It is a fundamental flaw to these aspects of this whole report - someone else should pay! Why does anyone other than a breeder owe the breeders a living? If breeders want a subsidy scheme to fund big studs and stallion owners then they should pay. But hey 'no', the Panel go to the refuge of fools and scoundrels and say "tax" someone, in this case imports and registrations from imported semen. Oh dear is this the best we can do?

Some questions as starters for 10:
1. Why tax owners to fund breeders and big studs and stallion owners?
2. If the imported product meets the market needs why not buy it?
3. The scheme will increase stallion fees. Every subsidy does. True or false?
4. The scheme will increase the use of poor stallions (people will use credits to bred to the local stallion that should not be in the gene pool) will it not?
5. Are there too many stallions in Australia at 330+?
6. Is not $16 million net return to studs extraordinarily poor for an industry in which everyone has to survive? How can the studs envigorate the gene pool at this level. Congratulations to the few far-sighted folks who are taking risks with the best imported bloodstock. They deserve to make a living and a return.

Just so that no one is in any doubt I believe that the punter if KING. From the punter comes the gold. The gold comes from competitive evenly matched drug free racing. Everyone else enters this industry with their eyes wide open, and if not they deserve everything that happens to them and no one owes them a cent.

John Mooney