Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I know it is getting late and I was not going to say anything on this, but you say the name Ben Yole and the pink mist descends because we found out today that the Office of Racing Integrity has approved Ben Yole to keep training. I very much look forward to reading the report into workplace health and safety in the racing industry because the evidence points to an industry which has been under-regulated, not held up to the standard that meets community expectations and has been resistant to reform over many, many years. If the government is serious about restoring the social licence of an irredeemably cruel racing industry and restoring trust in the industry – we just heard some of the matters raised to that committee – then it needs to have a look at these kinds of decisions.
Under the Australian Rules of Racing, any participant in the industry who has received a warning off notice is not to participate in the industry while that matter is the subject of an investigation. We have an Independent Stewards Panel which hands down its findings on 30 September, as I understand it and as reported in the media, yet we have the Office of Racing Integrity giving Ben Yole and the Yole stables the licence to train animals again after that investigative report of March last year where you had whistleblowers and animal welfare advocates come forward and the ABC’s investigations unit do a very thorough, unimpeachably solid, investigative reporting, which had video, that led to the Murrihy investigation.
The government cannot be allowed to forget that Murrihy substantiated findings of fact relating to allegations of team driving, race fixing and breaches of animal welfare standards and expectations. The Murrihy report, which does connect to the report that we are debating now, was a solid, clear vindication of Tasracing’s efforts to rein in Ben Yole and issue him with warning off notices. Yet we have an industry participant who is clearly too big to fail. I encourage members to have a look at some of the feedback from industry participants on news of Ben Yole’s training licence being ticked off by the Office of Racing Integrity three weeks before the Independent Stewards Panel brings down its findings. There are people from the Launceston Pacing Club – Ken Rattray, for example – long-standing participants in this industry, who know that people like Ben Yole give them a bad name. There is frustration not just from animal welfare advocates but from people who are the honest players in this industry who are being shafted by the Office of Racing Integrity, at times Tasracing, and failure to properly regulate and apply the rules of racing, for example. Allowing Ben Yole to keep training after the findings of the Murrihy report is an indictment on government and on the Office of Racing Integrity.
As a Green, I am here for the animals who are always a secondary consideration to this industry. I am not talking about all the participants in it, but to the industry broadly. Those honest brokers in the industry are let down too. If you read that ABC report from today, you can tell industry participants are confused and shattered by this development. I understand, member for Murchison, that I veered a little off OH&S issues in the racing industry, but it is all connected. There is a connection between the way you treat your animals and the way you treat the people who work for you. There is a linear, evidenced connection between people who are cruel to animals when they are children and people who are cruel to humans when they grow up. There is, and we know this.
I feel terrible for the horses in the Yole stables. I feel bad for those honest players in the industry who would never dream of the sort of stuff that was revealed on the ABC’s investigation and confirmed as findings of fact in the Murrihy report. This decision by the Office of Racing Integrity – and thank God it is going to be abolished once the legislation ultimately passes and establishes the new framework – drags the whole industry down. Every participant, every honest player is dragged down because the Office of Racing Integrity has clearly decided Ben Yole, who fields about 75‑80 per cent of the horses in any race on any given night, is too big to fail. What we have seen through this decision is a massive failure of the regulator.
