Racing and Wagering Commission chair Alastair Shields says he and the other commissioners will no longer accept personal gifts from the $50 billion online gambling industry they regulate, but can continue to own racehorses because of oversight provided by another committee that he happens to be deputy chair of, raising fresh questions about more potential conflicts of interest.

Mr Shields, who famously ran from Four Corners in a nationally-televised program last month and has avoided answering the NT Independent’s questions for months about a number of conflicts of interest and other governance failures at the Darwin Waterfront Corporation, told the NT News in an “exclusive interview” that he and his racing and wagering colleagues have all “voluntarily” agreed to stop accepting gifts from industry and to close their accounts with betting companies they are regulating.

Mr Shields did not explain why he and the other commissioners felt it was appropriate to accept gifts from the industry it regulates for years, what effect that had on ongoing public confidence, or why they have chosen to end the practice now.

There are no plans to make the commission’s conflicts of interest register public, he added.

But he said the six commissioners, which appears to include himself, will not be banned from owning racehorses because there was “appropriate oversight” provided by Thoroughbred Racing NT and the Racing Appeals Tribunal – the tribunal he is a member of.

Mr Shields was appointed deputy chair of the Racing Appeals Tribunal by Racing Minister Minister Marie-Clare Boothby last month, promoting him from his previous position as a member, which he held for an unknown period of time. He sits on five other committees or commissions, including as the director of Greyhounds Australasia, which is also overseen by the Racing and Wagering Commission.

“There are a couple of [racing and wagering] commissioners who have shares in racehorses,” he told the NT News after previously admitting to his involvement in a “syndicate” that owns horses.

“We’ve got some residual interaction with thoroughbred racing, but nothing that would allow us to influence anything with their race horses.”

But the Racing Appeals Tribunal hears complaints from people aggrieved by decisions made by the TRNT’s stewards group concerning horse racing, which would involve Mr Shields.

That potential conflict of interest and Mr Shields’s position on the tribunal was not reported in the NT News article.

TRNT directly reports to the Racing and Wagering Commission on an annual basis to show how it “exercised its powers as a race control body”, the RWC’s annual report stated, and is subject to directions and requests for other reports from the RWC.

The Four Corners investigation titled “Losing Streak” highlighted a dysfunctional regulatory system in the NT that sees the NT RWC act as the nation’s de facto regulator of the online gambling industry, with weak regulations, no full-time staff, a failure to report transparently, and massive delays in resolving complaints against online bookmakers, often resolving them with minor financial penalties, and failing to cancel a single licence despite serious breaches of the Act by industry members.

It also raised a “cosy” relationship between some commission members and the industry.

Mr Shields implied in his “exclusive” interview that he and the commission have not suspended or cancelled an online gambling company’s licence because of concerns the company concerned “would pretty much lose all of their business overnight”.

The Finocchiaro CLP Government have refused to take any action to investigate or clean up the regulator, with Ms Boothby rejecting an independent MLA’s referral for the Act that underpins the commission to be reviewed by Parliament’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, instead attacking Four Corners for raising the issues, with Ms Boothby claiming the commission is doing its job “really well”.

Ms Boothby later offered to take independent and Greens MLAs to the track with her to “be able to pick out a horse together and put two bucks on it and see what happens – that would be lovely…”

She has also claimed that changes to the Racing and Wagering Act last year by the previous Labor government were sufficient and did not need to be reviewed. A planned review that the government told ABC it would undertake following the Four Corners program appears to have been halted, with Ms Boothby repeatedly refusing to say where it stands or if it is proceeding.

Mr Shields said the changes to the Act last year brought the regulator up to date, but not, it appears, around conflicts of interest. He added last year’s changes gave the commission more “enforcement powers” and increased fines for breaching the Act.

The NT News article started by stating that Mr Shields “insists” the regulator has “enough teeth to police” the industry, but the concerns raised were more around the commission’s inability to regulate effectively due to the “cosy” relationship with industry.

“I’ve listened to the feedback on that and we are developing a code of conduct,” Mr Shields said, adding the commission has not accepted “any hospitality” since he was first exposed by the ABC in April.

Of the $42.4 billion spent on betting in 2024-25, the RWC only imposed $300,000 in fines, according to its latest annual report – the first annual report by the commission since 1993.