Flogging A Dead Horse

Politicians are struggling with the dollars and making no sense.

- Jane Clifton

 Cliché Class 101 for those in public life includes the rule that before asking a question, be sure what the answer will be – or at least its general postcode. The Government and Opposition have each committed the folly of allowing themselves to be unpleasantly surprised after making a chest beatingly big deal of an issue: the state of the racing industry, and the source of a leak against National leader Simon Bridges. A racing fan, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters scored a Budget tax break for bloodstock breeders and envisaged at least one all-weather course among further props for the long-ailing industry. So, more racing, not less. Inconveniently, the report he commissioned into racing’s optimal future has just aimed a dagger at his New Zealand First party’s electoral heartland. It advises closing 20 racetracks, most of which lie in the party’s provincial voter pool, and outsourcing the TAB’s commercial activities, probably to Australia, which is the sort of thing Peters made his name denouncing as “selling the family silver” to foreigners. As a sort of karmic accumulator, the police this week laid charges of devastating seriousness after a long investigation into suspected corruption in the harness-racing industry. Peters is right to say, “It’s reform or die, there’s no off-course substitute,” for a painful restructuring. But the proposed scratchings – beloved old courses such as Omakau in Central Otago – and acknowledgement that foreigners would run our industry better than us are dangerous territory for a party hoping to grow its vote by currying favour in long-neglected backwaters. People might notice that the party crying blue murder when air routes, rail links and bank branches are closed is the same one mothballing their local track, which is often a community hub.

If the ensuing Cabinet decisions bounce the wrong way with the indus