The good ship Good Neighbour will have more passengers nailed to its mast by April 26, but it was hard to ignore a particular juxtaposition of events on the weekend even as Macau's addition to the signatories was announced.
Amid great fanfare last September, the racing leaders of eight nations signed the Good Neighbour Policy (GNP) and agreed that they would 'not provide wagering on racing to residents of other signatory jurisdictions without the permission of that signatory jurisdiction, nor solicit, market or advertise wagering without prior authorisation from that other signatory jurisdiction'.
Australia was one of the eight, but last Saturday, GNP stood for nothing as one punter, described in the Australian media as an expat businessman resident in Hong Kong, bet A$2 million on champion galloper Lonhro at odds-on to win a Group One race at Rosehill on Golden Slipper Day.
When the horse won, he played up the winnings with another A$1 million bet on Golden Slipper hot favourite, Alinghi, which was beaten.
All in the space of an hour or two, a total of around HK$17.5 million in turnover left Hong Kong for a bookmaking operation in the Northern Territory of Australia.
The obvious observation would be that, since Hong Kong did not provide any wagering outlet on the Australian races, it is hardly as though turnover was lost. But as we have noted in the article above, one can start to be quite lost in the semantics of GNP.