Thanks to Winston Peters, ordinary New Zealanders will now be subsidising the racing industry - and specifically, its richest breeders and horse owners - to the tune of $9 million a year. And not by funding the construction of venues or by covering the costs of events to represent their presumed entertainment value to the public, but by directly subsidising prize pools.
Sure, it's not a hell of a lot of money, but its objectionable all the same. I'm dubious about subsidising sport as it is, but this is a particularly bad way of doing so, a direct subsidy from the poor to the rich. And from a Labour government, that stinks.