The date has been named and, next Thursday, our burning questions will be answered.

What will be in the Messara report and when and how will it be actioned?

Already though the naysayers are spreading their poisonous tendrils as they attempt to negate the report before it has seen the light of day.  They are no strangers to the industry, in fact it was possibly their ancestors who took machetes to every earlier report which sought to set the industry back on a profitable course.

All those missed opportunities to drag us back from the abyss – the bottom of which we now find ourselves – were the result of timidity of thought.  That inability to trust the people charged with doing a job and back the minds behind the likes of the McCarthy report has led us to this point in history.

It is one of the saddest differences between Australia and New Zealand.  Whereas the Lucky country is populated by gung-ho, optimistic, take-a-chance gamblers, we have a high proportion of dour, purse-lipped, wowsers who would rain on any parade.

Point out any positives in Australian racing to this lot and they will scowl, shake their heads and spit out some drivel about there just being more money in Australia.  Try and draw their attention to the gross over-spending and inability to rein in operating costs of our own NZ Racing Board and they have no answer.

What I find particularly sad is that some of those who have been sagely shaking their heads and claiming the Messara report will make no difference are supposedly journalists, current and former.  These people make (or made) their living from the industry, yet they are incapable doing their job which includes questioning those in power and taking them to task.  Instead, they accept puff-piece PR from the NZRB and seem to find it normal that we have an organisation whose costs outweigh its returns to the industry.

Of course, the difficulty we now have in New Zealand is the paucity of truly independent racing media.  This breaches many of the fundamental elements of journalism [Bill Kovach & Tom Rosenstiel] – its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover; It must serve as an independent monitor of power; Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

This lack of independence means those seeking out credible information need to look to the country’s only independent racing publication The Informant and its correspondent Brian de Lore, or the likes of the Otago Daily Times and its racing reporter Jonny Turner.

Racing coverage which seeps into mainstream media is either of the negative “rich racing people get given more money” theme; or, what should be the celebration of a wonder horse with a Kiwi connection, ending up being all about the money she has won.  The latter is due to a total lack of understanding of the industry from the presenters and those who have directed them towards the story.

What to do then when this long-awaited Messara report finally sees the light of day?

Read it through, breathe, read it again.  Sit back, mull it over and ask yourself one question.  Am I going to be part of the solution, or part of the problem?

Make no mistake, this is our last chance to finally get it right.  Tinkering around the edges and throwing a few all-weather tracks into the mix is not going to solve the problems we have.  This is going to take bold moves, some of which we may not immediately like.

You can be part of the problem or you can embrace the process and be part of the solution.