ACT Government has moved to replace the board of the ACT TAB, according to racing and other sources.
A special Cabinet meeting has been called for this morning to appoint chartered accountant Bruce Glanville as chairman and two other members, solicitor Elizabeth Bradley and the head of the Department of Sport Mark Owens, who is a former secretary of the ACT Racing Club.
The reports could not be confirmed officially last night and none of the new board members could be contacted directly last night.
The fate of the chief executive, Phillip Neck, is in the hands of the new board. It is expected though that the board will recommend to the Minister for Sport, David Lamont, that he be replaced.
The action follows the receipt by the Government of the report into the Vitab affair by Professor Dennis Pearce.
Professor Pearce inquired into the contract between the Vanuatu-based Vitab and ACTTAB under which ACTTAB gave computer access to the multi-state super-pool and other services in return for a percentage of turnover, enabling Vitab to run phone and other betting on Australian races. He is also inquiring into why the Victorian TAB terminated it super-pool arrangements with the ACT.
The contract led to a successful Assembly no-confidence motion against Sports Minister Wayne Berry last month causing him to resign.
Earlier this week the Opposition and the Independents called jointly for the Government to release the report. The Government responded by saying it would do so on Wednesday the first available sitting day after the Budget.
Government sources said last week that the report was critical of the ACT TAB, but had exonerated Mr Berry and the Department of Environment, Land and Planning, which embraced responsibility for sport.
Some TAB sources said Mr Berry’s replacement as Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for Sport, David Lamont, had demanded yesterday that existing board members resign. One did, another refused and another is overseas.
The move was aimed at making the ACT TAB carry the whole can for the Vitab affair and to enable the Government to argue it has acted and cleaned the matter up.
Apparently the department has come out quite well in the matter having done the things it was supposed to do.
Apparently the Independent and Opposition were going to censure or perhaps move no-confidence in the Government over the Vitab affair having received copies of the report earlier this week, but this could not be confirmed as all MLAs said they were bound by a confidentiality agreement.
The action happened with no official announcement, so details are unconfirmed.
TAB sources say the staff and TAB agents in the ACT are behind the former board and will meet this morning to discuss the situation. This may affect betting during the long-weekend racing carnival.
The super pool arrangements end late this month and there has been no annoucement by the Government whether they have replaced the arrangements with a deal with NSW. Without a link with another state the ACT’s pool of some $90 million a year will not be enough tos ustain medium and large punters, because their bets on individual races will be enough to affect the pool and diminish the odds. They are therefore expected to bet in other states, which is easy under telephone betting.
The result will be a substantial loss to ACT revenue.
Apparently Professor Pearce’s attention has been directed to the only verifiable element of the the heart of the Vitab scandal, but whether he reported on it is another matter.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Vitab was underwritten by large Australian interests sick of having to beat the 15 per cent of the betting pool taken out by governments and overheads. By setting up an arrangment in Vanuatu with access to the pool they would only be up against about four or five per cent taken out by the Vanuatu Government and overheads.
Vitab and the ACT TAB has consistently argued that Vitab was only to accept bets from Asia. Vitab apparently kept its word, but the bets from Asia included substantial money from agents of Australian betting syndicates someof whom put as much as $2 milion a year through the TAB.
The evidence drawn to Professor Pearce’s attention was the Vitab betting returns.
If Vitab received ordinary Asian betting money, one would expect its punters to get a similar return as the total of punters in Australia, namely 85 per cent. However, Vitab’s punters apparently have done much better than that, indicating knowledgable punters. The big betting syndicates, especially those in NSW manage to make money against the 15 per cent take, and would make even more against a four or five per cent take in Vanuatu.
None of this can ever be confirmed because that is the nature of it, but knowwledgable racing sources suggest that Vitab was from beginning to end nothing short of an Australian-based venture to get around the government monopoly on race betting. And the ACT government sector was too dumb to realise it. Getting around government taboos on betting has been going on in Australia for as long as a century.
The ACT Government has apparently tried to pass buck entirely to ACT TAB. However, a year ago Mr Berry deliberately changed ACT TAB’s structure so it was in his words more accountable to the Minister and the people of the ACT.