There are fears if the May Racing Carnival goes ahead this year in its reduced format it could be our "Ruby Princess moment", a Warrnambool City councillor says.
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Cr Kylie Gaston raised concerns at Wednesday's special meeting during debate to change the city's May races public holiday to November's Melbourne Cup.
The date change won unanimous support of councillors, and so did a recommendation from Cr Gaston for the council to send a clear message to the state government that the event should be cancelled or postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The carnival was reduced from a three-day event to two days, but crowds would be locked out.
"This is about protecting our community and I think we would be irresponsible not to ask strongly for the government to consider postponing or cancelling the event this year," Cr Gaston said.
"We know that by encouraging people to travel to Warrnambool from all over Australia we could be potentially aiding community spread of this virus.
"The community is telling us they are fearful of our May races becoming our Ruby Princess moment and no one wants to risk additional loss of lives."
Hundreds of passengers allowed to disembark from the Ruby Princess cruise ship in Sydney have since tested positive to the virus and many have died.
Cr Gaston said everyone was making sacrifices with businesses closed, kids not able to go to school, sports including footy and netball cancelled.
She said by taking a strong stance it would alleviate "as much pain as possible".
Cr Peter Sycopoulis said he wasn't anti-racing but was "dumbfounded" there hadn't been an uproar over racing continuing.
But he said it was not in the council's hands to cancel it - that was a decision of the state government, racing club and Racing Victoria.
Cr Sue Cassidy said that while she enjoyed the races, with no community cases of COVID-19 in the city, she wanted it to stay that way.
She said with the pandemic starting to flatten out, there was a chance for businesses to re-open sooner rather than later. But if there was a community outbreak any return to normal could be further away, she said.
Cr Cassidy said having people come for the races was "high risk".
Crs Cassidy and Sycopoulis said they would like to see the public holiday scrapped altogether, but acknowledged that couldn't easily be done.
"I think businesses in the community have enough to deal with at the moment without enforcing a public holiday onto them next month or even later in the year for that matter," Cr Cassidy said.
She said businesses would need "every available hour, day, to recoup income losses".
Mayor Tony Herbert said that whether he agreed with it or not, there had been 250 races in Victoria since March 13.
However, he said he wasn't sure the region could "risk" allowing the carnival to go ahead.
Cr Gaston said the council didn't have the authority to stop it going ahead but could let the government and racing club know it did not endorse any major events in the city during a stage three lockdown.
Cr Mike Neoh said many people were making sacrifices and even the "massive" grand prix event was cancelled. He called on the state government to ensure the inter-regional travel ban wasn't half-hearted.
Cr Robert Anderson said the area needed to be protected from people coming in and causing an outbreak.
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