Council backflip on cup holiday

Horsham district residents will have a public holiday for the Melbourne Cup this year – on the day of the famous race.

Horsham Rural City Council voted, after lengthy and passionate discussion at a meeting on Monday night, to switch the holiday back from Horsham Cup on the Friday before the Melbourne Cup, to the Tuesday.

The 4-3 split decision, based on heavily publicised community and business anxiety about having the holiday on a Horsham Cup Friday, represented a significant council backflip.

In April last year, after a request from Horsham and District Racing Club and subsequent public engagement, the council resolved to switch the Melbourne Cup public holiday to Horsham Cup for three years, with plans for a review after the second year.

The council’s Monday night decision came after only one year of the schedule and despite the council promoting a comprehensive value-adding Destination Horsham program as part of the Horsham Cup weekend.

Councillors remained firmly split in their views after assessing a report on the issue from acting chief executive Graeme Harrison.

But they were also unified in a belief of a need to best look after the interests of all parties involved.

Crs John Robinson, David Grimble and Les Power spoke strongly about a need to maintain the public holiday on Horsham Cup for at least another year.

Cr Robinson used success stories from other regional areas where the holiday switch had ultimately generated ‘substantial’ community benefits.

He added that Horsham people and schools were now more informed about what was happening and it was critical to support Horsham and District Racing Club.

Cr Grimble agreed, stressing the importance of the financial and social contribution the racing industry made to the region and that the Horsham Cup holiday offered opportunities to the club and businesses.

Unconvinced

But Cr Alethea Galvin, based on community feedback, remained unconvinced and moved for the holiday to be shifted back to Melbourne Cup day to support ‘the greater community’.

She had support from Crs Mark Radford, Josh Koenig and mayor Pam Clarke, Cr Koenig saying he could not ignore the community and business backlash he had received.

He suggested the Destination Horsham weekend could continue with greater buy-in from businesses.

“I simply can’t ignore all the calls, statistics and data I’ve received from the wider community,” he said.

Mr Radford said the issue was more about the placement of the public holiday on a Friday, more than Horsham Cup day.

He said it was ‘always risky when using local business community as a social experiment’, a comment that later attracted a strong rebuke from Crs Grimble and Galvin.

“The most challenging thing was that people were turning up to businesses on Friday and the doors were locked. They then turned up on Tuesday and the doors were locked,” Mr Radford said.

Cr Clarke said she believed Horsham schools were aware the council was making a decision on the issue and with Cr Galvin was confident they would have enough time to be flexible to change their calendars.

She joined others in stressing a need to continue supporting the racing club and its cup day.

“Racing is a very important industry in Horsham, but so too are our other businesses,” she said.

Cr Power, who had argued that Horsham was notorious at missing opportunities to support major events, was disappointed with the final vote.

He said after Cr Grimble successfully moved to invite the racing club to discuss a way forward that, ‘we’ve just shown support for one community group against another – which is sad to see’.