Horse racing is the lifeblood of many North West communities and there remains pressure on our once-a-year clubs to stay afloat. Earlier this month, North West Weekly editor Matt Nicholls caught up with Racing Queensland CEO Brendan Parnell about racing’s future in the bush.

Matt Nicholls: Brendan thanks for taking the time to chat. What is it about North West race meetings that make them so popular?

Brendan Parnell: Racing is the heartbeat of so many regional communities in Queensland. 

In 85 towns, racing is the biggest or second biggest event.

It’s the place where mates get together to catch up and where people might meet their future partner.

It’s also a great way for local communities to raise much-needed funds for charities as well.

No matter how small the town – and there are some towns with no population – on race day they swell to hundreds, if not thousands.

MN: We’ve seen prizemoney increases in places like Mount Isa, Cloncurry, Julia Creek and throughout North Queensland. We know that a lot of these meetings are not on TV and they’re not generating income to support themselves, so how do you find the money for increases and why is it so important to support those meetings?

BP: The increases have been supported because the cost of living, cost of fuel and cost of horse feed has gone up. The prizemoney has been supported through the Queensland government’s Country Racing Program.

The government supports racing because of the social benefit of racing in those centres.

We’re also converting venues – particularly strategic venues – and putting them on national television and making them TAB status so they do earn revenue and, importantly, showcase the Outback.

MN: Isn’t it a catch-22 for a place like Mount Isa to have these Monday TAB meetings? It’s good publicity for Mount Isa but you are probably not going to get a crowd on a Monday compared to the traditional Saturday timeslot.

BP: Well, it’s an interesting one. Because of the amount of shift work in the Isa, there is an opportunity for shift workers, particularly miners, to get out and enjoy races during the week. In recent years we’ve had a TAB meeting during rodeo week, and that’s become incredibly successful.

If there are other major events where they have music events or agricultural events or things like rodeos, we’ll look to put race meetings into those places during the week because people are in those towns anyway and they’re looking for more things to do.

MN: The Battle of the Bush has been run and won this year and there are some other great country showcase meetings in the regions. How important it is to have these big finals and heats in regional areas to give owners and trainers something to aim for?

BP: Well firstly the races you have mentioned have been fantastic. And the rivalry it drives in the regional towns is just amazing.

The Battle of the Bush has been a great success. The concept of pitching 16 regional towns up against each other with a grand final in Brisbane has been popular.

The series is worth $400,000 so it’s serious prizemoney.

MN: Just on a slightly different topic and I’ve been talking to some local trainers and owners about local racing issues and the constant complaint is jockey availability. There has been a suggestion that the industry could help bolster jockey numbers at meetings through subsidised flights or charter flights. Is that something worth looking into? It’s not like there’s a shortage of jockeys in Queensland necessarily, but available jockeys for some of these remote meetings.

BP: The biggest challenge we have is in the Central and North West of the state, especially some of those regions that don’t race for parts of the year due to the heat.

That means there isn’t a regular amount of meetings for jockeys, which can make it tough to attract them to live there.

We are looking at a range of initiatives, but it remains one of our biggest challenges to address.

We are doing some recruitment exercises in regional and Indigenous communities and looking at potentially bringing in foreign students.

In regards to subsidised travel, the Cloncurry Race Club, to its credit, subsidised some air travel for jockeys for one of its race meetings last year to make sure that there were enough jockeys to cover the whole race meeting.

MN: Every club in the bush wants to race on a Saturday but is it worth looking at some Sunday meetings so jockeys could potentially ride twice in a weekend and bolster numbers?

BP: It’s a great suggestion. We’d like some more clubs to consider Fridays or Sundays or Mondays.

It’s a balancing act between the volunteers and the great work they do but also avoiding clashes.

MN: There’s a suggestion here that Mount Isa could scrap the TAB meetings on a Monday and maybe host an afternoon or twilight meeting on Friday. You could kick off at 3pm with half-hour intervals between races. Is it up to the clubs to make these decisions or does RQ determine when they race?

BP: It’s not a directive it’s just us working together. What you’ve just raised is a great idea.

Mount Isa could take advantage of the time zone and amount of late afternoon light because it’s so much further west from the coast.

If it’s not a Friday, it could be another time depending on the Sky time slots that are available.

Watching races at the Isa in the iconic Outback would be a great spectacle on national television.

MN: One of the criticisms that racing people have is the separation between Racing Queensland and QRIC (Queensland Racing Integrity Commission). There have been issues with QRIC when a meeting is impacted by weather and a club could race the next day but hasn’t been able to due to a lack of stewards. Do we need to get better as an industry?

BP: The key thing to understand is that we are one industry and we need to work closely with QRIC.

They’re the integrity commission that runs race meetings.

When issues happen, there will be times when resources don’t allow things to happen because it’s such a vast state and we have such a busy calendar, but we will always look for ways to do it better.

We need to work with locals who know track conditions to make sure that we’re making the right decisions and not postponing meetings later than we should be.

This article appeared in North West Weekly, 4 August 2022.