Victoria Police are investigating an incident the place a protester sprayed 1,000 litres of oily sludge on Flemington Racecourse tracks hours earlier than Australia’s most well-known horse race, the Melbourne Cup.
The particular person accountable has referred to as themselves a “drawback gambler” in a two-page assertion printed through the local weather group Extinction Rebel Victoria’s Twitter account.
Within the assertion, they referred to as consideration to what they described because the “poisonous” racing trade’s far-reaching impacts.
“That is about Victorian Racing Membership (VRC), and the poisonous trade of which they’re leaders, selecting to guard their racecourse in opposition to the impacts of local weather change on the expense of individuals’s houses and livelihoods,” they stated.
The protester goes on to make clear the demonstration was in opposition to VRC’s determination to take care of , some residents say, made the devastation brought on by the latest Victorian floods extra extreme.
“That wall ought to by no means have been constructed, what is thought solely as a racecourse to them, is a vital pure floodplain that will have lowered flood ranges in houses if not for the pursuits of the highly effective racing and playing trade,” the stated.
“For me, this act of company negligence and callous disregard is the ultimate straw in a protracted line of horrors I’ve now come to learn about this trade.”
The Flemington Racecourse flood wall was first in-built 2007 however has these days prompted anger from the group amid Victoria’s devastating floods. Credit score: Ellen Sandell
The assertion additionally mentions the playing tradition within the racing trade and says the “Melbourne Cup is the super-spreader occasion for the virus of playing habit.”
“I first began playing with a punt on the Melbourne Cup. It was straightforward to manage and luxuriate in in the beginning…however quickly sufficient I used to be dipping into financial savings, skipping social occasions to look at races, I realised that I wasn’t taking part in, I used to be being performed,” they stated.
Victoria Police stated the occasion occurred round 6am on Tuesday and has confirmed investigations by the Melbourne Crime Investigations Unit stay ongoing.