Sports administrator Peter V’landys has launched legal action after questions were raised about whether his leadership of rugby league had distracted him from running the state’s $3.3 billion horse racing industry.
The long-time Racing NSW chief executive and chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission filed defamation proceedings against racing news website The Thoroughbred Report and its managing director, Vicky Leonard, with the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday.
At issue is an article posted by the site in November which questioned whether it was time for change after V’landys’ two decades in charge of racing and whether the sport should impose term limits on CEOs.
It credited him with delivering the sport rivers of gold via betting-related taxes and other reforms, but he has accused the site of suggesting his long tenure had since become a liability for racing.
V’landys has also claimed the story contained misinformation about the state of the racing industry under his watch and that it wrongly implied that he could not give enough attention to racing because of his role as head of the ARL Commission, which controls the National Rugby League.
The new court action puts V’landys on a legal war footing on two fronts, personally and as CEO of Racing NSW, whose bitter dispute with the Australian Turf Club will be heard over two days in the Supreme Court next week.
The hearing will effectively decide who has command of the country’s biggest race club, which operates Royal Randwick racecourse and owns three other metropolitan racetracks in Sydney, and whose board members are fighting a move by Racing NSW to dump them and install an administrator.
The Thoroughbred Report, which mainly publishes bloodstock news, was one of three Australian racing websites to receive legal letters late last year over their coverage of the V’landys-led industry regulator and commercial juggernaut.
Leonard, who founded the site and co-owns it with US-based Irishman Gary King, said she and her organisation would be fighting the claims in court.
“Our article was a measured, data-driven analysis of CEO tenure – it was not defamatory, and we will be defending this claim vigorously. In fact, we believe Mr V’landys has defamed me personally, and we have issued our own concerns notice in response,” she said.
“Using a Supreme Court writ in response to independent media asking uncomfortable questions is a clear failure of governance. It is textbook ‘chilling effect’ – the exact behaviour the NSW parliament formally cautioned Mr V’landys against only months ago.”
Leonard was referring to report released by NSW parliament’s privileges committee in October which raised “serious concerns” that Racing NSW engaged in conduct that may have deterred potential witnesses from coming forward to the inquiry into the proposed sale of Rosehill Gardens racecourse.
The report did not make a specific finding about V’landys, who denied that Racing NSW had attempted to interfere with witnesses.
V’landys declined to comment on Wednesday but in December alleged Leonard’s marketing consultancy, Kick Collective, had benefited financially from cash raised for National Thoroughbred Week, a nationwide project Leonard launched last year to raise awareness about the positives of racing in which trainers such as Gai Waterhouse and Chris Waller opened up their stables.
Invoices showed Kick Collective had billed National Thoroughbred Week $55,558 last August for setting up a website, plus advertising, social media and other services, but Leonard denied the money was redirected for her personal gain, refuting what she called “shockingly damaging” allegations.
She said she had put in 300 hours of her own work without charge and her business had provided services at a discounted rate because there was not enough sponsorship funding to pay another company.
V’landys has engaged defamation specialists Mark O’Brien Legal but has not said whether he or Racing NSW is footing the bill. He told The Australian Financial Review in December that “the people who will be paying for it will be them”.
State laws under which Racing NSW has wide-reaching powers are the subject of a review by former health minister Brad Hazzard, and the article on The Thoroughbred Report included a link to a government website where submissions to the review could be made.
V’landys previously sued the ABC over a 2019 episode of 7.30 that aired graphic footage of the mistreatment and slaughter of retired racehorses.
He was unsuccessful in demonstrating that the program had defamed him and also failed to overturn the decision on appeal, although the Federal Court ruled he had been treated “very shabbily” by the national broadcaster.
As well as being CEO and a board member of Racing NSW, since 2019 V’landys has also been the most powerful figure in rugby league in Australia as head of the ARL Commission.
His case against The Thoroughbred Report is listed to be heard in court for the first time on March 27.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
From our partners
Read the full article here
