‘Unprovoked verbal abuse’: Officials investigate Mark Latham over alleged racecourse tirade

Racing officials are investigating an incident at Rosehill in which NSW independent MP Mark Latham allegedly launched an expletive-laden verbal onslaught against a club executive and long-time friend of Premier Chris Minns.

Latham, a fierce critic of the proposed $5 billion sale of Rosehill racecourse to the state government to make room for a mini-city of 25,000 homes, allegedly abused the Australian Turf Club’s head of corporate affairs and government relations Steve McMahon. The alleged incident occurred after the pair came across each other in the members area on Tuesday.

Independent MP Mark Latham and the Australian Turf Club’s Steve McMahon.

“Someone had to tell him what everyone thinks of him,” Latham told this masthead.

The western Sydney racecourse was staging a full meeting, including the group 1 Tancred Stakes and Vinery Stud Stakes after Saturday’s racing was postponed by rain.

“The Australian Turf Club is investigating an incident of alleged unprovoked verbal abuse by an ATC member against a senior ATC official,” a club spokesman said.

“The incident was witnessed by several people and the investigation is continuing.”

McMahon declined to comment.

The run-in took place just days after a high-profile and controversial vote over the future of Rosehill was delayed on the orders of industry regulator Racing NSW.

A decision over whether to sell the track to the state government was to be determined by the ATC’s 11,000-plus members at an extraordinary general meeting on Thursday and online voting had been under way since mid-March.

But on Friday, Racing NSW announced that it had instructed the ATC to delay the vote until May 12, saying that information provided by the club was insufficient for members to make a properly informed decision.

Latham last year heaped scrutiny on the proposed sale during an Upper House parliamentary inquiry which heard from witnesses including champion trainers Gai Waterhouse and Chris Waller and Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys.

The hearings examined the process in which the plan was developed, including the role played by McMahon, who first made Minns aware of it in October 2023.

McMahon and Minns previously served on Hurstville Council together and have known each other for 25 years.

The multi-party parliamentary committee that held the inquiry said in its report last December that the premier “should have declared” a conflict in relation to the meeting with McMahon.

“Furthermore, given this conflict of interest, the premier should therefore have met with the chair and/or the chief executive officer of the Australian Turf Club,” the report said.

Minns had noted the discussion with McMahon in his ministerial diary disclosures as a “meet and greet”, a description the committee found was “inaccurate and misleading” because of their long association.

Save Rosehill, the group representing ATC members opposing the sale, was scathing of the vote being pushed back by six weeks, saying in a statement after the delay was confirmed that it viewed it as “a clear attempt to ignore the majority who voted ‘no’ and a clear deprivation of members’ rights”.

It has yet to be confirmed whether the votes already lodged online will be declared null and void, but if the resolutions put to members are amended, there would have to be a new vote.

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