Category: Opinion – De Lore

by Brian de LorePublished 12 June 2020 The Transport and Infrastructure Select Committee should be extolled for all the hard work applied to the rewrite of the Racing Bill, which released last Monday, has seen a transformation from the dog’s breakfast it was in December at the first reading to a much more acceptable document for the racing industry. But concerns still exist that racing risks forever dancing to the tune of the Minister of Racing, whoever that might be in the future, or an unsympathetic left-wing government, because the…

by Brian de LorePublished 5th June 2020 If you have a successful business you’re looking to run into the ground and send broke, the New Zealand TAB has almost completed writing the perfect blueprint, but don’t call its helpline for the recipe because it’s become famous for providing no help. In fact, the helpline at the TAB has brought to light numerous recent stories of the phone ringing unanswered or operators arguing with disgruntled punters rather than appeasing them, and even hanging it in their ear. Punters consulted to write…

by Brian de LorePublished 29 May 2020 Minister of Racing Winston Peters has today announced the departure of RITA henceforth and from June 1st racing will fall under the administrative control of WCTU NZ (Women’s Christian Temperance Union of New Zealand). The Minister said he was forced to put the WCTU in charge when he came to his senses and realised it would be better, both for his image and for racing, to go bankrupt under the control of an organisation with good Christian values, which they exemplified on the…

by Brian de LorePublished 22 May 2020 Politics, self-interest, hidden agendas, lies, charlatans, nepotism, egotism, creative accounting, jealousies, incompetence, lack of vision, hatred, arrogance, foolishness, self-indulgence and ignorance – traits that have reared their head in various individuals that have played a part in the decline of racing over the last dozen years. Plenty of good people who have done their best and contributed positively to racing have come and gone. But few of those have been the big decision-makers and administratively-speaking racing has a disastrous history under NZRB (New…

by Brian de Lore Published 15 May 2020 Tuesday’s announcement by Racing Minister Winston Peters contained some very interesting messages, but none more so than his delivery of $72.5 million which is a feat only Winston Peters could do for an industry about to go bankrupt. Peters has to be given credit for his ability to pull a rabbit from the hat at the eleventh hour but will the participants of racing receive any tangible benefits from this windfall, or is it too late? COVID-19 took the blame for racing’s…

by Brian de Lore Published 8th May 2020 Better late than never, but Wednesday’s announcement by RITA that it’s finally decided to reduce costs is a classic case of ‘too little, too late.’ It may be a short-term respite for RITA’s chronic cash-flow condition, but it neither addresses the long-term competitiveness of the racing industry in any shape or form and nor will it off-set the expected substantial decline in code distributions, hence the pending prizemoney decline for 2020-21. That predicament is notwithstanding RITA’s application to Treasury for a COVID-19…

by Brian de Lore Published 17 April 2020 We have no racing; we have no idea when Jacinda & friends will permit the resumption of racing; the TAB is likely to be in breach of the law for trading while insolvent; racing falls further into debt as each week passes. The 135 employees quoted in this headline is really 136 but because Executive Chair Dean McKenzie who took over from John Allen on January 1st is on an unknown remuneration, he is left out of the calculation. They are not…

by Brian de Lore Published 3rd April 2020 Racing Minister but more poignantly Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, who turns 75 tomorrow week, was talking-up a post-COVID-19 pandemic economy for New Zealand in the press earlier this week. He was comparing our current predicament to that of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the USA from which the then-President Franklin Roosevelt with his New Deal turned things around and made the USA the most powerful economy in the world. The USA in the 1930s had the scale New Zealand…

by Brian de Lore Published 28th March 2020 Racing shouldn’t be falsely lulled into believing it’s having a month off and will be back by May or June. The epidemiologists are saying the coronavirus pandemic could be a couple of months off peaking which means the racing season is as good as over, and it may be the middle of spring or even beyond before post-coronavirus life returns to a state of reasoning that will justify the return of horse racing. No sensible owner in New Zealand will keep racehorses…

At Karaka 2020: the industry’s ex-jockeys now trainers who would love to see a rise in NZ prizemoney: From top left Stephen McKee (one trial ride), Graham Richardson (one race win), Lance O’Sullivan (Champion Jockey), Bob Vance (Outstanding Jockey) and at right Grant Cooksley (outstanding Jockey) by Brian de Lore Published 31 January 2020 When Racing Minister Winston Peters made his speech to open the Karaka Yearling Sales last Sunday at 10.50 AM, it was a typically hot and humid Auckland summer’s morning in rising temperatures. But within seconds of…