An industry-wide meeting of Queensland’s breeders, owners, trainers, jockeys and bookmakers at Doomben on Wednesday opposed proposed changes to the sport’s organisational structure and the decision by the State Govt and Racing Queensland to cut $18.8 million in prize money.

Racing Queensland is currently being run without a board and has an interim chairman in John Muir and an interim chief executive officer in Ian Hall.

A proposal put forward for a new seven-member board to be made up of four non-racing people and one representative from each of the three codes of racing has also been opposed by those at the rally.

The plan is due to be debated in parliament in March but industry participants have called on the government to scrap the idea.  Instead, there was a unanimous call for the government to appoint a board under the current scheme and for that board to hold off making changes until a review was conducted.

State opposition leader Lawrence Springborg, Brisbane Lord Mayor and small-time breeder Graham Quirk, and Katter Party state member Shane Knuth were all in attendance at Doomben.

Premier Anna Palaszczuk, new Racing Minister Grace Grace and former Racing Minister Bill Byrne were all invited but declined.  “Thank you to everyone for attending,” said TBQA President, Basil Nolan.  “It’s great to see such a united, positive turnout and it shows how important this issue is.”

Nolan said the recent sustainability plan released by the State Govt had no long-term future for racing.  “There has been $70,000 a Saturday ripped from prize money in the metropolitan area alone.  At the same time, we can get no-one to give us exact figures on RQ’s projected loss and how much it costs to run every year.”

Leading trainer Rob Heathcote said the confidence he had shown by spending $700,000 on yearlings this year had been eroded by recent decisions.  He said the industry should revert to the former model where gallops, greyhounds and harness racing had their own administration.

The meeting also passed a motion of no confidence in Mr Hall.

There has been a deluge of written support from stakeholders who were unable to attend the Rally, with well over 2,000 letters and emails received and almost a further 2,000 Facebook supporters.

“We’re fighting for the livelihoods of 30,000 people who are directly employed by racing in this State, plus thousands more indirectly,” said Nolan.  “We will continue to put pressure on the Government and lobby all parliamentarians to ensure this Bill is not passed and our resolutions are instead upheld.”

Meanwhile, Racing Queensland officials have revealed that the body has had five successive years of losses totalling $40 million.  At its AGM on Wednesday, it was also shown that there had been a $12.7 million loss for the 2014-15 financial year.

RQ chairman John Muir and acting chief executive officer Ian Hall both made formal presentations at the meeting, which was held at the same time as racing industry participants held a rally across the road at Doomben.

Hall said RQ had borrowed $17 million from the state government to fund prize money and ongoing operations.  A range of other key topics were discussed including Sky Channel’s coverage of Queensland racing as well as RQ’s agreement with UBET.