Bet each way? Waterhouses offered controversial property for new Sydney racecourse

The Waterhouse dynasty has offered up its $330 million farmland as the site for a new Sydney racecourse to replace Rosehill, despite members of the racing family being among the most vocal opponents of the $5 billion sale of the western Sydney track.

The sprawling 220-hectare property, which disgraced former NSW MP Daryl Maguire once infamously tried to cash in on, was offered to racing authorities by bookmaker Robbie Waterhouse, the husband of celebrated trainer Gai Waterhouse, and his sister Louise Raedler-Waterhouse.

The land near the new airport in Sydney’s far west has been in the Waterhouse family for more than 50 years.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Racing officials were privately astonished they had put forward the land as a replacement track site, given Gai and Robbie Waterhouse’s staunch and very public resistance to the sale of Rosehill to the state government to make room for a mini-city of 25,000 homes.

Gai Waterhouse, flanked by her husband, last July told a parliamentary inquiry she was “incensed” by the proposed Rosehill sell-off, and Robbie has stepped up his own criticism of the sale process on social media this year.

The block, from which former premier Gladys Berejiklian’s one-time secret lover Maguire stood to make as much as $1 million in a 2017 deal with a Chinese developer that fell through, lies just west of the new Western Sydney International Airport, and it was suggested as a location for another racetrack in the event that Rosehill racecourse is sold.

Racing NSW and the Australian Turf Club, which owns Rosehill and whose members will vote on its future next month, said they were both approached by the Waterhouse’s about their acreage at Wallacia.

“Mr Waterhouse made an initial informal comment to an ATC official regarding a large block of land owned by members of the Waterhouse family,” an ATC spokesman said.

“Months later, the club agreed to a meeting to discuss the land’s suitability for a racecourse, or as a training facility.”

After a meeting in December with the Waterhouse siblings, it was ultimately ruled out as an option by the race club, which deemed its configuration and location unsuitable, not least because of noise concerns for horses so close to the airport.

Robbie Waterhouse said on Tuesday that it was the ATC that came to him. “I don’t see how it’s hypocrisy. Anyone who approaches us … we’re happy to listen to what they have to say,” he said. “If the racecourse is sold, it’s best they find the best place they can.”

Robbie Waterhouse (left) with wife and hall of fame trainer Gai Waterhouse at last year’s Rosehill inquiry.Credit: Kate Geraghty

He said he and his sister had been invited to meet with the ATC and its consultants and asked to show them where their landholding is. The concept had “gone no further”, he added.

“We both met with them. We were invited to go and see them, so we went and saw them,” he said. “We’re very commercially minded. We’re happy to sell something at a certain price.”

The land bordering the under-construction airport at Badgerys Creek has been held by the Waterhouse clan for more than half a century and was passed down from family patriarch Bill Waterhouse, the controversial bagman who died in 2019, aged 97.

According to property and corporate records, Robbie Waterhouse, who followed his father into the betting game, has a 60 per cent stake in it through one of the family companies, Oakhope Pty Ltd, and in his own name. Louise Raedler-Waterhouse, who is Tonga’s honorary consul general in Australia, a post occupied by Bill Waterhouse for decades, holds the remaining 40 per cent.

The land owned by the Waterhouse family near the new western Sydney airport.Credit: Wolter Peeters

A high-profile bookie, Robbie has a colourful history in racing. He was warned off racetracks and spent 17 years without a licence for his part in the Fine Cotton ring-in in 1984. After being reinstated, he was suspended for nine months for offering extravagant odds to a long-term associate.

The land next to the new airport has been beset with zoning issues which have thwarted attempts by the Waterhouses to develop or sell it and for it to be included within the Western Sydney Aerotropolis.

Daryl Maguire and Louise Raedler-Waterhouse.Credit: NSW ICAC

They had initially devised a technology park and five-star tourism destination that would purportedly create 5600 jobs, and later pushed to establish a fresh food and agribusiness hub with biosecurity and quarantine facilities.

Maguire’s assistance in lobbying planning officials and Berejiklian for favourable changes to the land’s designation and road access was revealed by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation into the conduct of the former Wagga Wagga MP.

An inquiry heard Maguire had agreed to “grease the wheels” for Raedler-Waterhouse in a bid to have the land rezoned and had provided her with the email address of Berejiklian, who he said in an intercepted phone call could “give it a tickle from up top”.

Maguire had helped arrange a potential sale of the property to Chinese real estate giant Country Garden eight years ago, for which he was in line to receive a commission of up to $1 million from an agent. It was never sold.

While Maguire and Berejiklian were found by the ICAC to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct in the course of their close relationship, the former premier was not accused of wrongdoing in relation to the Waterhouse farm.

There were no adverse findings against Raedler-Waterhouse or any other member of the Waterhouse family.

After an eight-week postponement from the original date, the ATC will hold an extraordinary general meeting of members on May 27 to decide whether to sell Rosehill.

ATC chairman Peter McGauran has said the deal would future-proof racing in Sydney for a century, but it has split the club’s board and been questioned by prominent industry figures, among them Australia’s leading trainer Chris Waller.

If Rosehill is sold, the ATC is likely to redevelop Warwick Farm racecourse into a top-line metropolitan venue and secure land at Penrith for a training facility and midweek track.

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