Mark Latham turns star witness for Peter V’landys’ Racing NSW

It’s the unholy alliance nobody saw coming.

After gunning for Peter V’landys and Racing NSW for two years, NSW MP Mark Latham is helping the thoroughbred industry regulator to bring down Australian Turf Club chairman Tim Hale.

The upper house MP and Hale, a senior counsel, have known each other since the early 1990s and were on the same side in opposing the race club’s $5 billion sale of Rosehill Gardens racecourse.

But their relationship has come undone since Latham was punted by police from Royal Randwick on Epsom Day last month.

Latham alleged in a parliamentary spray last month Hale had shared confidential board information with him during the Rosehill saga, when the turf club chair was deputy to pro-sale chair Peter McGauran.

He also raised questions about whether Hale declared a conflict of interest due to their association when the club’s board suspended Latham from its tracks in October.

So intent is Latham to nail Hale he’s turned over material to his old enemies at Racing NSW, which has been weighing up whether to sack the turf club board over financial and governance issues.

A Racing NSW spokesperson confirmed “as part of the [club’s] show cause process, Racing NSW has received a statutory declaration and other documents from Hon Mark Latham relating to Tim Hale”.

According to a race club spokesman, Hale “categorically rejects any suggestion that he shared any confidential ATC board information with Mr Latham during the Rosehill sale debate, or at any other time”.

This column was told Hale declared an interest last month when the board met and didn’t participate in the debate or vote on disciplinary action against Latham. But he is said to have stayed in the meeting, which required the presence of all four remaining directors for a quorum.

However those events are viewed, the irony of Latham and Racing NSW being in cahoots is delicious.

The former Labor leader has gone after V’landys relentlessly (often under the protection of parliamentary privilege). The Racing NSW chief executive and NRL head honcho has rejected everything his rival has said as a smear.

“Now I’m their star witness,” Latham said.

Off with his head

Speaking at the Business Western Sydney Aerotropolis Conference 2025 in Warwick Farm on Wednesday, council chief executive Jason Breton (who used to be a local copper) began his speech with a rather grisly anecdote.

“I used to be a detective chief inspector and very, very close to this site, on the very same morning, we found a headless body and a bodiless head,” he said.

“But it was Friday, so Friday back in the ’90s, we used to go for a lunch, probably have too many beers, and go home – and it was only when those two pieces got to the morgue that we realised that the head didn’t belong to the body, and that’s the problem with Liverpool.”

Where on earth was Breton going with all this?

“Everybody in the room makes assumptions about what Liverpool is. I heard the lip team just talk about some press. I’ve heard others speak today about Penrith and Parramatta, but not so much about Liverpool, because there’s people that assume things about Liverpool.”

Of course, events at the council have been similarly bloody, at least in a torturously metaphorical sense. When Breton permanently took the $500,000-a-year job in April he became Liverpool’s 11th chief executive in less than a decade, following last year’s unceremonious dumping of former Liberal MP John Ajaka following a bitter falling-out with mayor Ned Mannoun.

A public inquiry into dysfunction and maladministration at the council continues. After the inquiry revealed Mannoun had solicited a donation from a property developer to bankroll Breton’s own failed local government run, rival councillors tried, ultimately unsuccessfully, to move a motion removing the chief executive and referring him to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

But Breton is still around. To quote another famously dismembered body, “’tis but a flesh wound”.

Flying circus

Virgin staged its media Christmas party this week, inviting 50 hacks from around the country for a dinner at Loulou Bistro in Martin Place to toast a 28 per cent jump in pre-tax profits and its triumphant return to the ASX under affable American chief executive Dave Emerson.

But red faces at the airline weren’t just from the Christmas cheer.

The night was attended by a flock of media celebs including Ben Fordham, David Koch, Sarah Abo, Natalie Barr, Michael Usher and Dr Katrina Warren among others. None brought their pets along, as far as we can tell.

There was just one teensy-tiny problem: some of the tickets the airline issued to interstate guests were wrong. The airline managed to misspell the name of our aviation writer Chris Zappone (tip – it’s in the paper most days) as well as The Australian Financial Review’s Ayesha de Kretser.

Airline loyalty expert Adele Eliseo, who founded The Champagne Mile advisory service, was reborn as Adele Zappone – a person who doesn’t exist.

Despite some mishaps with check-in, all’s well that ends well, with everyone able to attend the function in time.

“A couple of flight bookings required updating, and we have apologised. We hope everyone had a wonderful night,” a spokesman said.

But are you thinking what we’re thinking? It would never have happened under Jayne Hrdlicka.

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