The fate of a “once in a generation opportunity” to turn a racecourse into 25,000 new homes in Western Sydney will be decided by a vote today.<\/p>\n
It will mark the end of a 17-month saga involving racing identities, parliamentary inquiries, property deals and briefly, the corruption watchdog.<\/p>\n
Who is voting and what are they voting on?<\/p>\n
Members will vote on whether the racetrack should be sold to the NSW government. (Supplied: ATC)<\/p>\n
The 11,000 odd Australian Turf Club (ATC) members will vote to sell Rosehill Gardens Racecourse to the state government at an asking price of $5 billion.<\/p>\n
The state government will then on-sell the land to developers and put in a stop on the new Metro West line to serve the new precinct.<\/p>\n
In return for giving up their racetrack, the ATC has promised members $1.9 billion-worth of upgrades to other Sydney tracks, including turning Warwick Farm into a replacement Group 1 track.<\/p>\n
If the vote gets up, the club will give existing members a $1,000 food and beverage tab, once a year for five years. Plus, five years of free membership.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Members have been promised $1.9 billion-worth of upgrades to other tracks if the sale proceeds. (Supplied: Australian Turf Club)<\/p>\n
Who are the key players and where do they stand?<\/p>\n
The club’s chairman Peter McGauran said the sale is vital to safeguard the future of racing given “attendances and wagering declines are faster and deeper than expected”.<\/p>\n
According to Mr McGauran, there’s a strict deadline on the proposal given the government is drilling the new Metro adjacent to the track “and they need to know very quickly is the ATC selling Rosehill or not?”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Peter McGauran says the sale is vital for the future of racing. (Supplied: ATC)<\/p>\n
Racing NSW used legal powers to instruct the club to postpone the initial vote, saying it provided “insufficient” information.<\/p>\n
The move was criticised by “vote no” campaigners who felt they could have won the vote if it went ahead.<\/p>\n
Since then, the ATC has beefed up their proposal by committing to turn Warwick Farm into a better track than Rosehill with $800 million worth of upgrades while exploring a potential new track at Penrith.<\/p>\n
‘Save Rosehill’ group make their case<\/p>\n
A campaign of members and industry figures who oppose the sale of Rosehill include well-known racing identities Gai Waterhouse, Julia Ritchie, Jason Abrahams and John O’Shea.<\/p>\n
Among their complaints is that the state government has not actually committed to paying $5 billion for the racecourse \u2014 that’s just what the club is asking for.<\/p>\n
They say the sale would cause businesses financial headaches by having to move horses and training to regional Australia, potentially losing long term staff who cannot relocate.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gai Waterhouse is among the high-profile opponents of the sale. (ABC News: Abbey Haberecht)<\/p>\n
They’re not convinced about the Warwick Farm upgrade.<\/p>\n
“What they’re proposing now is to spend around a billion dollars redeveloping existing track on a location that is a floodplain,” Mr Abrahams told the ABC.<\/p>\n
They’re also not happy about the club offering up to $5,000 worth of bar tabs to members if the sale goes through.<\/p>\n
“Essentially it’s a bribe as far as I can see,” Mr Abrahams said, while the club maintains it is to stop falls in racing attendance.<\/p>\n
Some members said they do not want to lose green space or a local amenities from Western Sydney.<\/p>\n
The group maintains they’re not opposed to building much needed housing too.<\/p>\n
Ms Ritchie told the ABC it’s “not an either, or” situation, and said the club had land around the racecourse that could be developed into housing.<\/p>\n
As for NSW Premier Chris Minns, he initially backed the deal 17 months ago, describing it as a “game changer” in terms of meeting Sydney’s housing demands.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Premier Chris Minns has ruled out compulsory acquisition of the club if members vote not to sell. (ABC News: Myles Houlbrook-Walk)<\/p>\n
He was then referred to the corruption watchdog over his relationship with a senior ATC official but they declined to pursue the matter.<\/p>\n
He has ruled out compulsory acquisition of the club if members vote not to sell.<\/p>\n
What happens next?<\/p>\n
Members will either gather at Randwick Racecourse at 2pm to cast their vote, or they will have already delegated a proxy.<\/p>\n
It is expected that we will hear about the fate of the racetrack and\/or 25,000 potential homes at around 4pm. By then maybe this years-long Sydney stoush will have a resolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fate of a “once in a generation opportunity” to turn a racecourse into 25,000 new homes in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[58992,58997,58991,59006,59001,6333,58988,58995,58994,59004,59005,59003,58993,59007,59000,58989,58990,1071,58998,58996,58999,58987,79,16,15,59002],"class_list":{"0":"post-134208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-atc","9":"tag-atc-chairman-peter-mcgauran","10":"tag-australian-turf-club","11":"tag-chris-minns","12":"tag-gail-waterhouse","13":"tag-housing","14":"tag-housing-deal","15":"tag-icac","16":"tag-independent-commission-against-corruption","17":"tag-jason-abrahams","18":"tag-john-oshea","19":"tag-julia-ritchie","20":"tag-nsw-premier-chris-minns","21":"tag-nsw-state-government","22":"tag-peter-mcgauran","23":"tag-plan-to-turn-a-racecourse-into-25000-potential-homes","24":"tag-property-deals","25":"tag-racing","26":"tag-racing-nsw","27":"tag-racing-nsw-boss-peter-vlandys","28":"tag-rosehill-gardens","29":"tag-rosehill-gardens-racecourse","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-uk","32":"tag-united-kingdom","33":"tag-why-is-rosehill-racecourse-going-to-be-sold"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}