NSW govt bans greyhound racing

[Chief]

At least when race dogs get injured they're ALWAYS diagnosed and treated, usually by a vet.

Not always, if you believe the vet in the article linked earlier. Injuries not recorded, deaths not recorded, someone ripping the tail off a dog and leaving it lying around. You seem to be presenting it as a pretty scrupulous industry when we have witnesses - including that vet at the track - saying it isn't, records are not kept and cruelty is pretty commonplace.

You have people in this thread saying that "you're not from the country" because apparently country people have a different attitude to animals and death. Another publicly declaring he doesn't care if a pest animal is strung up for live baiting. These don't lend confidence to the argument that the industry is doing the right thing. People publicly admitting they live bait without seeming to care that it is illegal, and claiming that killing otherwise healthy dogs is no big deal.

 

[sprockets]

It sounds a bit shifty "people who own under 25 dogs".

What is the number if you include all breeders, owners etc?

"Shifty" is interesting. The NSW Government (through GRNSW) regulate and enforce those regulations remember. They're responsible for record keeping. If anyone's being shifty (which IMO they aren't in this case because, as I stated above, it would cover 99% of owners) by picking and choosing who they survey it's the NSW Government, the same people that accused the industry of deception. Get where I'm coming from? It's not the sport/industry being shifty, it's the regulator GRNSW, ie, the NSW Government. Their OWN quite accurate survey told them how many dogs are put down but instead they choose what the McHugh report tells them. Why?

Now, I'm really trying to understand the question and being as open and honest as I can, so what number are you after, the number of greyhounds owned by those that own over 25 greyhounds? At a guess I'd say somewhere between 1500 - 2000 or 10% of dogs currently racing.

 

[sprockets]

Not always, if you believe the vet in the article linked earlier. Injuries not recorded, deaths not recorded, someone ripping the tail off a dog and leaving it lying around. You seem to be presenting it as a pretty scrupulous industry when we have witnesses - including that vet at the track - saying it isn't, records are not kept and cruelty is pretty commonplace.

You have people in this thread saying that "you're not from the country" because apparently country people have a different attitude to animals and death. Another publicly declaring he doesn't care if a pest animal is strung up for live baiting. These don't lend confidence to the argument that the industry is doing the right thing. People publicly admitting they live bait without seeming to care that it is illegal, and claiming that killing otherwise healthy dogs is no big deal.

They're not always recorded by GRNSW but they're still always treated by the vets/musclemen or trainers.

Not that it's anyone's business but I'm from Melbourne but have been living in regional Vic for the past 4 years. I understand the difference in views between city and country people. What you're saying about not caring is the same for people who have no involvement with any racing. Some people are cruel, full stop, and to expect that no-one within racing is would be ludicrous. Even with all the regulation and policing in the world some people within racing will still find a way to be cruel. However, people outside racing don't need to worry, they can be as cruel as they like because it'll never be as heavily policed and the media won't kick up a storm about it like they do every time it happens within racing. I reckon one in a thousand cases of domestic cruelty is actioned by authorities and reported in the media.

By the way, Pal Meaty bites is quite a big seller. You won't find ANY racing people feeding that s**t to their dogs.

 

[terminators]

That depends on whether you want the truth or not. Much of the evidence and many submissions by 'interested parties' (ie, anti-racing nutjobs) contained misinformation and outright lies and some of the conclusions of the report are purely guesses.

*Publicly available

Greyhounds Australasia (GA) comprises representatives from jurisdictional controlling bodies in Australian states and territories, and New Zealand (the GA Directors).The charter of GA is to support these jurisdictions via encouragement of a national approach to the Australasian greyhound racing industry.



Would you consider Greyhounds Australasia a respected party to provide a submission?

If so what are your thoughts on Exhibit J, provided by GA? Particularly the parts where they say this:

- 7,000 greyhounds per year do not make it to the track (40% of all greyhounds whelped)
- The industry is responsible for the deaths of between 13,000 and 17,000 healthy greyhounds every year
- The culture of the industry is defined by animal deaths by acceptable and necessary and where profits come before welfare
- The industry has done a poor job in understanding the nature and depth of this fundamental problem, and has done very little to find a solution

 

[terminators]

Greyhounds being put down was never hush hush, same as it's not hush hush that domestic dogs and cats are put down at the rate of around 250,000 each year. It's legal within the industry and in the general public.

You are the master of spinning numbers in an apples vs oranges format to tell a story.

Why not just say 3% of domestic cats & dogs are put down. Anywhere between 30-60% of greyhounds.

 

[terminators]

And here's the reason I didn't quote the figure in the McHugeLie Report:

"GRNSW calculated wastage was closer to 7 per cent from figures canvassing owners with less 25 greyhounds, which equates to about 6790 dogs from 97,000 greyhounds registered to race in the past 12 years. GRNSW has kept the data — the only firm industry estimate to contest the wastage allegation — under wraps since submitting it to Mr McHugh’s inquiry. Submissions were suppressed except for evidence to public hearings."

That's from GRNSW, the NSW Government's own regulatory body. One might ask why the NSW Government (and McHugh) decided to keep it quiet.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...t/news-story/e8410a8a913ae19188bdc959064291d3

Here we go again. If you pull the number which has the lowest wastage and just pluck that part out it might reduce the %. The number which matters is the total, not just the part you want to tell.

Interesting though as GA also advised that hobby breeders would be out of business if the industry had to reform, so I guess that % would be irrelevant. You'd know that though as it was in the GA submission to the commission

 

[sprockets]

Greyhounds Australasia (GA) comprises representatives from jurisdictional controlling bodies in Australian states and territories, and New Zealand (the GA Directors).The charter of GA is to support these jurisdictions via encouragement of a national approach to the Australasian greyhound racing industry.



Would you consider Greyhounds Australasia a respected party to provide a submission?

If so what are your thoughts on Exhibit J, provided by GA? Particularly the parts where they say this:

- 7,000 greyhounds per year do not make it to the track (40% of all greyhounds whelped)
- The industry is responsible for the deaths of between 13,000 and 17,000 healthy greyhounds every year
- The culture of the industry is defined by animal deaths by acceptable and necessary and where profits come before welfare
- The industry has done a poor job in understanding the nature and depth of this fundamental problem, and has done very little to find a solution

That exhibit wasn't provided by GA, however it's a a copy of an email sent to GRSA by the GA CEO, Scott Parker, who isn't from any State body. What you're failing to tell us, whether that be deliberately or because you don't know, is that Scott Parker retracted that figure a few days after it became public, saying that he hadn't taken into account greyhounds that were kept by owners before and after racing, dogs rehomed by independent rehoming groups, who rehome FAR more greyhounds than the industry bodies and dogs that had died of sickness or injury.

The amount of dogs (40%) that don't make the track is irrelevant, afterall poodles don't make the track either. "Profits come before welfare"? Not for more than 90% of participants who race their dogs as a hobby, lose $100mil per year and are happy to do so.

 

[sprockets]

You are the master of spinning numbers in an apples vs oranges format to tell a story.

Why not just say 3% of domestic cats & dogs are put down. Anywhere between 30-60% of greyhounds.

Why not say it? Because I'm not a liar. It's a pity you can't say the same. Every figure I've given is accurate to the best of my knowledge, which is far more knowledge than most who have an opinion on greyhound racing, including your good self.

 

[terminators]

Why would the CEO of GA say this if he didn't believe it not true. What difference does it make it he's part of a state body or not? He's part of a national body


- The culture of the industry is defined by animal deaths by acceptable and necessary and where profits come before welfare
- The industry has done a poor job in understanding the nature and depth of this fundamental problem, and has done very little to find a solution

 

[sprockets]

Here we go again. If you pull the number which has the lowest wastage and just pluck that part out it might reduce the %. The number which matters is the total, not just the part you want to tell.

Interesting though as GA also advised that hobby breeders would be out of business if the industry had to reform, so I guess that % would be irrelevant. You'd know that though as it was in the GA submission to the commission

Apologies for posting up the most accurate assessment of euthanasia of them all.

 

[terminators]

Why not say it? Because I'm not a liar. It's a pity you can't say the same. Every figure I've given is accurate to the best of my knowledge, which is far more knowledge than most who have an opinion on greyhound racing, including your good self.

I'm sure you are the oracle of greyhound racing in this nation and have a better view than the 150,000 pages of documents tabled by the commission.

Based on your vast knowledge should I be taking the $6-50 the decision gets overturned in parliament or the $1-08 it gets ratified?

 

[terminators]

Apologies for posting up the most accurate assessment of euthanasia of them all.

Apology accepted

 

[sprockets]

Why would the CEO of GA say this if he didn't believe it not true. What difference does it make it he's part of a state body or not? He's part of a national body


- The culture of the industry is defined by animal deaths by acceptable and necessary and where profits come before welfare
- The industry has done a poor job in understanding the nature and depth of this fundamental problem, and has done very little to find a solution

Because he didn't actually have any idea until he was informed. Pretty silly mistake, but then it was only in a private email, not in a submission to the NSW Inquiry. Just because he's part of a National body doesn't mean he has any understanding of the grass roots. GA are little more than record keepers and they're pretty ordinary at that as well. BTW, to answer your earlier question, No, they aren't respected within the sport/industry by participants.

 

[sprockets]

I'm sure you are the oracle of greyhound racing in this nation and have a better view than the 150,000 pages of documents tabled by the commission.

Based on your vast knowledge should I be taking the $6-50 the decision gets overturned in parliament or the $1-08 is gets ratified?

What I'm saying is that I know a hell of a lot more than you or anyone else commenting here, apart from one or two, but you already know that and just want to argue. You won't be getting any more responses from me, troll.

 

[HeathySure]

Now, were you joking or just bullshitting? If you were joking it was a pretty tasteless joke. Here's one for you - do you think the public accepts that it's ok to slaughter 250,000 cats and dogs every year?

The one problem i have with that argument is that the dogs and cats that are slaughtered are not bred for the sole purpose of racing. Those animals are ferals or old pets who are put out of their misery or sadly neglected animals who cannot find homes. There is not one specific "organisation" for want of a better word that causes the deaths of those animals.
If greyhound racing was banned the only greyhounds bred would be purely by those who love the breed, and i would imagine there would be no greyhounds put down at all

 

[iluvparis]

Feels like the Greyhound industry was asleep at the wheel and assumed the investigation would just lead to a bit of a slap on the wrist and tighter regulation. They certainly didn't seem to have gone to any great extent to provide figures that support the continuation of their industry.

 

[Chief]

You are the master of spinning numbers in an apples vs oranges format to tell a story.

Why not just say 3% of domestic cats & dogs are put down. Anywhere between 30-60% of greyhounds.

That's a pertinent fact.

Also, people generally don't own a couple of dozen dogs and use them for sport.

And sprockets it isn't as if pet dog ownership isn't regulated, and that there are no penalties for mistreatment. Thanks to a baseless report from a vindictive neighbour years ago, I know our council is onto reports of mistreatment pretty quick, even when the same person reports every dog owner in the street.

 

[sprockets]

That's a pertinent fact.

Also, people generally don't own a couple of dozen dogs and use them for sport.

And sprockets it isn't as if pet dog ownership isn't regulated, and that there are no penalties for mistreatment. Thanks to a baseless report from a vindictive neighbour years ago, I know our council is onto reports of mistreatment pretty quick, even when the same person reports every dog owner in the street.

It's not a pertinent FACT at all. As I stated, the most accurate assessment, the one by the NSW Govt body GRNSW themselves, shows the real figure to be around 7%. If we include ALL pets in the domestic markets apart from just cats and dogs (birds, fish, reptiles, etc) you'll understand that the real figures are probably in the same ballpark.

Chief, I never said pet ownership isn't regulated, it's just regulated and policed far, far less than the racing industry. The dogs are checked over (by a professional) far, far less than a race dog. At the very least a race dog will be checked weekly.

If we're using personal examples I'll tell you about where I lived up until earlier this year. On one side was the woman basher who would go away for up to a week and leave his dogs without food or someone to check on them. He even left his pet rabbit in there with them, uncaged! On the other side was a guy who'd leave his (coincidently) 3 dogs tied up all day, every day. Until I stepped in these people were going along their merry way. God knows what they were being fed but I dropped in a couple of bags of food to the guy whose dogs were tied up. The other guy I wanted nothing to do with. Now, those might sound like convenient stories and if you don't believe them too bad.

Also, what's wrong with "using dogs for sport"? It's not really using them and if you knew about greyhounds you'd know that they love to run, race and compete and when they race they do it on a far better surface than a dog park. Here's a video of my two retired dogs I took last year at Horsham track during a race meeting (ages then were 4 and 9). Tell me they don't want to be out there.



Also, this dog of mine wasn't in a race so tell me why she did this



I could show you dozens of videos of greyhounds running, racing and competing against each other off the track. So, since when is allowing these dogs to do what they want to do wrong? If sport was bad this site wouldn't exist, but it does.

 

[Bostonian]

Perhaps some people need to actually visit a site like Greyhound Racing Victoria and see how they are structured because it sounds like they have no clue as to how its actually set up.

For example

http://www.grv.org.au/report-suspicious-activity/

and this

http://greyhoundcare.grv.org.au/ which entails this http://greyhoundcare.grv.org.au/workshops/

And you can check out the all important requirements for lures here http://greyhoundcare.grv.org.au/lures/

In fact that Greyhound Racing Victoria website is one of the most comprehensive sites anywhere online in regards to a racing breeds health and well being.

Far better than anything the Thoroughbreds or Harness have.

 

[sprockets]

To be fair, the guys (general public) that are or seem to be against greyhound racing have been fed so much s**t from the media and animal rights groups (who are where the media gets most of it's information) for so long that the reality must seem incomprehensible.

As an aside, did you know that Animals Australia believes you support cruelty if you eat meat and want us all to become vegetarians? Fact!

"The average meat-eater consumes around 100 animals every year. That's how many innocent animals can be spared from cruelty each time someone makes the decision to shift to a healthy vegetarian diet."

http://whyveg.com/animals/

 

[sprockets]

For the doubters, have a read of this. It's not comprehensive but it's a good piece of journalism.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...e/news-story/bcd1045f8b1d199fe2f98188bea698fa

Greyhound racing industry dogged to its death by ‘social licence’
Hedley Thomas
National Chief Correspondent

Brisbane




It started with a quote that appears to be a hoax. When counsel assisting Stephen Rushton SC, in an opening salvo in September at a royal commission-style inquiry into greyhound racing, attributed to Mahatma Gandhi the words “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals’’, he made a powerful point.

Yet the oft-claimed attribution to India’s former leader is almost certainly wrong. There is no evidence the words were Gandhi’s.

Rushton’s opening rhetorical flourish was the first in a number of misfires, say lawyers and participants, in an unusually run inquiry that saw the senior lawyer on public day one declaring the message to the government about the $300 million-plus-a-year industry was: “Just shut it down.”

Four weeks ago, the inquiry led by former High Court judge Michael McHugh QC produced a scathing final report.

It was sufficient to persuade Premier Mike Baird to vow to shut down greyhound racing in NSW, where the industry is by far the nation’s largest.

Yesterday, the industry responded with its first legal challenge: proceedings filed in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney by a legal team headed by former commonwealth solicitor-general David Bennett QC, who argues that the report was fundamentally flawed, unfair and “irrational”.

Industry takes on greyhound banIMore: Industry takes on greyhound ban

The fallout since the report has been immense. An industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year is being prepared for the chop in 11 months; thousands of dogs face death; and the livelihoods and passions of owners, trainers, breeders, club officials and punters, along with countless small businesses built on racing’s spin-offs, are being abolished with the stroke of a politician’s pen.

Baird has repeatedly linked his decision to the inquiry’s report. It was, he insisted, the most forensic and objective examination of an industry rocked by scandal.

The Premier cites the report and rattles off numbers and findings to stave off criticism from those who feel badly wronged.

He is accused of punishing thousands of people because of the appalling conduct of a small minority. His decision is exposing tensions among his parliamentary colleagues, giving animal liberationists a major fillip to take on other sports, and putting the government in ongoing conflict with backers, particularly in the regions, and commercial media from Macquarie Radio’s 2GB to News Corp to Sky TV.

Baird is toughing it out — but he needs the inquiry and its final report to be rock-solid.

The Weekend Australian has been examining aspects of the inquiry and its report amid serious disquiet among lawyers, greyhound experts and inquiry participants. They raise a host of concerns about the inquiry’s modus operandi, from witness selection to the selection and interpretation of evidence, which, they say, inevitably influenced the severe findings.

Confidential legal documents obtained by The Weekend Australian highlight what are claimed to be instances of “irrational” and “illogical” conduct and conclusions of the inquiry, with emotive and intemperate language. They describe repeated instances of an alleged glaring lack of procedural fairness and, at times, a process verging on shambolic.

Rushton declined to respond to questions and a request for an interview with The Weekend Australian. With his opening, he gave every indication he had made up his mind before the start of public hearings. Claims that ill-informed guesswork led to extremely rubbery estimates about dog deaths are levelled at the inquiry.

The controlling body, Greyhound Racing NSW, which has been led in a caretaker role since early last year by the Baird government’s senior public servant Paul Newson, is accused by some of its senior staff of ‘‘running dead’’ at the inquiry, of rolling over to accept undeserved punishment, and failing to take on dodgy evidence and witnesses.

Newson is regarded with suspicion by former and serving staff, some of whom say he should have instructed lawyers to fight for the industry and push back strongly against unfair claims made during the inquiry.

The Weekend Australian can reveal that the inquiry’s preliminary written finding about Brent Hogan, the chief executive of the control body until he was removed last year, was described as “unfair, unbalanced, makes erroneous conclusions, and deploys unnecessarily intemperate and hyperbolic language to enunciate moral judgments”, in the formal rebuttal by his lawyer, Dominique Hogan-Doran SC.

She went on to highlight alleged jurisdictional errors including a “failure to make inquiries (and) absence of evidence’’; “denial of procedural fairness’’; and “erroneous facts or reasoning’’. The senior lawyer attacked the inquiry’s conduct in key areas as grossly unfair, arguing that relevant witnesses were not called to give evidence; those who did get into the witness box were subjected to only limited questioning; transcripts of public hearings were frequently delayed by several days or weeks; transcripts from private hearings were provided “on the run or not at all”; and witness lists were not routinely published in advance.

Most of the criticisms were never meant to be revealed because the inquiry insisted on a high degree of secrecy in some of its deliberations. People facing adverse findings were told earlier this year they could not disclose a word of it to anyone. They were issued with a “confidentiality deed’’ they were required to sign.

Bill Fanning, the retired former head of integrity at GRNSW, was warned of a likely adverse finding, despite not having been called as a witness. He was warned that he could not disclose anything to his own lawyer unless that lawyer had also signed such a deed.

This was meant to be a public inquiry, yet there were more days of secret hearings (the transcripts of which remain concealed) than public hearings. In the inquiry’s 16-month timeframe, at a cost of more than $15m, there were just 10 days of public hearings — three in September, two in October, three in November and two in February — with a total of 26 witnesses.

About half of these were trainers and most were alleged live-baiters. Five of the others were vets, but while there are numerous vet advocates for greyhound racing, they were not called.

For many trainers, breeders, owners and others, the process and outcome stink. As the fightback by the industry and its advocates develops momentum, veterinarian Liz Brown, from Casino in the Northern Rivers region, says in her opinion the report is littered with factual mistakes and makes “grossly inaccurate” assumptions and findings about animal welfare.

“If it were not so serious for so many people, it would be laughable it has been accepted as fact,’’ she told The Weekend Australian.

Brown says the public who paid for the inquiry should be concerned it relied heavily in public hearings on a few vets with anti-greyhound-racing agendas, who were wrongly held out as experts despite lacking qualifications.

“As a result, it was always going to be painted as bad — it never had a chance,’’ Brown says. She advised NSW parliamentarians in a lengthy letter this week that several of the vets are “known to have predetermined agendas — the ruination of the greyhound industry — and have worked together to provide the commission with false and/or misleading evidence to achieve their goals”.

Anyone who read the inquiry’s 55-page opening in late September, before a single witness had given evidence at a public hearing, should have been unsurprised by the final report’s tone.

Right from the outset, Rushton, the statutory appointee to the Environment Protection Authority since 1997, was clearly flagging the end of the sport. As senior counsel assisting the inquiry and its commissioner, McHugh, Rushton held extraordinary powers, and insiders say he threw himself into the role with gusto, preparing reams of material, shaping investigations, and weighing evidence. Legal sources describe it as “Rushton’s inquiry’’.

McHugh, 80, who retired from the High Court a decade ago, stamped the process with his towering judicial authority.

Rushton could have begun with an open-minded view about whether the industry, reeling from the live-baiting exposed by animal liberationists who had covertly used cameras to catch a number of trainers in serious acts of cruelty, had a future under a tougher regulatory regime.

Instead, he made it plain that greyhound racing was bad for too many animals. He introduced an amorphous requirement, saying that “a sport which utilises animals cannot operate without a social licence” and declaring the industry had lost this indeterminate thing.

Rushton’s opening flayed the control body and its former management, ridiculed their reform proposals, admonished breeders and trainers, and described “‘an industry culture defined by animal deaths; an industry culture which considers this to be necessary; an industry culture which considers this to be acceptable; an industry culture which puts profits before animal welfare’’.

He said there was a simple message to government from the wider community: “Shut it down. Just shut the joint down. Now.”

As to whether concrete and credible reforms and stronger powers could work to change the industry, Rushton warned: “I doubt that it is possible. If it is not, then, in my submission commissioner, you would in due course recommend to government that it close the industry down.”

The final report, released early this month, duly savages the regulatory body and its senior staff, accusing them of many failures — among them practising a deliberate deception of the public, including people interested not in punting but in animal welfare, particularly in relation to “fatalities during races, and dogs that have needed to be put down by the on-track veterinarians as a result of catastrophic injuries suffered during a race’’.

The final report also condemns the stewards who oversee racing because certain information, the rare deaths of greyhounds in a race, was not being published in stewards’ reports read by punters.

The inquiry had relied on the evidence of co-operative witnesses such as Gregory Bryant, a vet who had kept a diary of his work for the control body at racetracks from Wentworth Park to Dapto for 14 months until August last year.

According to the inquiry, Bryant was conscientious and concerned that stewards’ reports did not record the fact that an injured dog had been destroyed at a track; instead, the reports noted the fact of the injury. The inquiry heard that the industry did not want to “stir up the greenies” by publishing information about deaths.

Solicitor John Laxon, representing the chief steward, Clint Bentley, regarded the inquiry’s proposed scathing findings as being based on a false premise and unfair. Bentley and the control body owed obligations to punters, not to animal welfare groups or the broader public. Punters wanted to know about injuries because this would influence their betting. “It is the reporting of the fact of the injury, not the detail of the injury, that is relevant,’’ Laxon told the inquiry in his confidential written reply to a foreshadowed adverse finding against Bentley.

“Stewards’ reports are prepared for the purposes of informing the wagering public, to enable punters to inform themselves as to a greyhound’s capacity and ability in racing. The self-evident fact of the matter is that punters do not bet on injured dogs, regardless of the injury, nor do they bet on dead dogs. It is the bare fact that an injury has occurred that is relevant.”

Laxon also pointed out that there was nothing in the legislation, nor the rules of racing, suggesting that stewards’ reports should be prepared to educate animal welfare groups.

He rejected the inquiry’s reliance on Bryant’s diary and parts of the vet’s evidence that there were 197 discrepancies between the diary and official stewards’ reports. The inquiry had come to a view that the control body and its stewards were knowingly engaged in “deception’’ and “suppression’’, substantially because of these purported discrepancies. But when thoroughly analysed, Laxon argued, these discrepancies were minor and “not extraordinary at all”.

Yet the inquiry’s final report made a point of accepting what it described as “the general accuracy of the matters recorded by Dr Bryant in his diary’’. Tellingly, the final report does not suggest that omitting from stewards’ reports the fact of greyhound deaths in races offended in any way against any of the rules or the legislation. There was no rule breach.

Instead, the final report asserted that such conduct was “inconsistent with GRNSW having a continuing social licence to operate”. Caretaker GRNSW chief Newson’s public statements have also cited the need for the sport to “secure its social licence”, and Newson, who has lost the confidence of most staff, was singled out for praise in the preface to the inquiry’s final report.

Newson told The Weekend Australian yesterday: “To challenge the rigour or credibility of the commission’s comprehensive report isn’t prudent or appropriate for the industry regulator. I’m also doubtful it would restore our social licence.” He said the control body he leads worked to help the inquiry and co-operate at all times, adding he was disappointed at the ban as “I believed we could have restored our social licence”.

The repeated citing of a “social licence’’ rankles with greyhound enthusiasts, including Brenton Scott, head of the Greyhound Racing Industry Alliance. He says the industry understands tangibles: clear rules, legislation and policy. Something as subjective and airy-fairy as a “social licence’’ is harder to follow. It is also a key part of yesterday’s legal challenge.

Scott says: “No one has ever seen, touched, smelt, heard, tasted or sensed a social licence. No one has ever owned a social licence. A social licence has never been bought or sold, inherited, transferred, copied, faked or handed in …(yet) the Premier has announced his intention to ban an entire industry based on it ‘losing its social licence’.’’

Retired integrity chief Fanning cannot disguise his frustration. “The way this has been done beggars belief,’’ he says, adding that he would have strongly challenged some of the inquiry’s positions if he had been issued a subpoena. “On my reading of the transcripts, there was a narrow and pointed line of questioning tending to lead witnesses to answer questions favourable to the opening address.

“We have been thrown under a bus without regard for natural justice or procedural fairness. If this is what you call an independent inquiry, god help the lot of us.”

Disclosure: Hedley Thomas contributed $1000 three years ago for a minority interest in a greyhound

 

[Lebbo73]

That's a pertinent fact.

Also, people generally don't own a couple of dozen dogs and use them for sport.

And sprockets it isn't as if pet dog ownership isn't regulated, and that there are no penalties for mistreatment. Thanks to a baseless report from a vindictive neighbour years ago, I know our council is onto reports of mistreatment pretty quick, even when the same person reports every dog owner in the street.

I was just watching your mate, Luke Foley, on Sky News. He has reaffirmed his support for greyhound racing in NSW. He has also promised tougher regs to make sure the small minority don't do the wrong thing. Tough jail sentences for those involved in animal cruelty. Luke has also attacked Baird on his decision to make a private industry illegal while Scott Morrison has just said that we need to encourage private industries.
Thrawn would be happy with Luke Foley's intention to bring in life sentences for those caught up in the extreme acts of animal cruelty. I better not move to NSW and kick the dog!

 

[Chief]

Mate?

 

[Lebbo73]

Mate?

How does it go?
Australia, the only country in the world where you call your friends campaigner and your enemies mate!

 

[Number37]

Not always, if you believe the vet in the article linked earlier. Injuries not recorded, deaths not recorded, someone ripping the tail off a dog and leaving it lying around. You seem to be presenting it as a pretty scrupulous industry when we have witnesses - including that vet at the track - saying it isn't, records are not kept and cruelty is pretty commonplace.

You have people in this thread saying that "you're not from the country" because apparently country people have a different attitude to animals and death. Another publicly declaring he doesn't care if a pest animal is strung up for live baiting. These don't lend confidence to the argument that the industry is doing the right thing. People publicly admitting they live bait without seeming to care that it is illegal, and claiming that killing otherwise healthy dogs is no big deal.

If you look at the demographics of the greyhound racing industry the majority are baby boomers. McHugh acknowledged that the industry will die off by itself in the next 10-20 years simply because of this fact. Old habits die hard.
Not that it excuses it but live baiting has been in greyhound racing since day dot simply because it was a legitimate means of schooling the dogs to race. Sure you can argue that society has moved on from those days but the allegation that it is widespread TODAY is unfounded.
As for the killing of healthy dogs, that has been over stated by some degree. A census conducted by industry participants in the last month found that there is somewhere in the vicinity of 40,000 greyhounds living right now.
As for the record keeping, that is entirely the fault of the regulator which is, and has always been, a government entity.
In the late 90's in NSW there was an ICAC inquiry that found corruption by racing officials employed by the regulator ( namely the chief steward).
In the late 00's in Vic there was a cleanout of staff at the regulator because of improper conduct. The accusations were centred on draw rigging and favouritism and betting by employees of the regulator.
Both of these were massive failures of government and demonstrate that governments have been unconcerned about what happens with regulation even though all the greyhound racing enabling legislation specifically delimits regulation to a government entity and only a government entity, which has always been paid for by the industry itself.
Name one other industry where the industry pays for the regulator?
There has been lots of debate about demerging regulatory and commercial functions (historically both have been under the umbrella of the same organisation XXXX Racing Authority). Wherever action has been taken to tackle this specific issue it has always been at the behest of government.
The point is, the NSW government is saying greyhound racing can't regulate itself when in fact it is the governments responsibility and despite the industry paying for the regulation the government has failed the industry. What are the rank and file supposed to do when the government run industry regulator fails to stamp out practices like live baiting?

I am not sure if greyhound racing is anachronistic or not but the argument that the government has put forward to justify shutting down the industry is complete bollocks. I do not have any connection to the racing side of greyhound racing but I do have an interest in government regulation.