Greyhound racing reforms fall well short
Greyhound racing industry reforms passed in the state’s Legislative Council last week ensure “business as usual for the industry … with the word ‘integrity’ tacked on”, a leading Greyhound welfare advocate says.
While Racing Minister Jane Howlett hailed the reforms as “critically important”, Let Greyhounds Run Free advocate Fran Chambers said the organisation was “far from happy with the proposed legislation”.
“It is in effect a Racing and Regulations Bill with the word ‘Integrity’ tacked on,” Ms Chambers said. “It ensures business as usual for the industry, with even less transparency despite the hype.
“The Office of Racing Integrity — the apparent ‘welfare’ buffer — will be subsumed into the commercial TasRacing,” she said. “The proposed role of Office of the Tasmanian Racing Commissioner is unclear and gives us no confidence that anything will get better for the Greyhounds.
“What the Government doesn’t seem to get is that using and abusing animals for gambling revenue and marginal votes is long past its use-by date. Why is the Government so adamant to keep this archaic, cruel industry going and funding it with our taxes?”
Meanwhile, Minister Howlett said the Government had “delivered a key election policy commitment” and said initial work to implement the reforms was well under way.
“I want to rebuild trust and restore faith in racing across all three codes and see them thrive,” she said. “The Tasmanian Government is a proud supporter of Tasmania’s racing community and the passionate Tasmanians who are a part of it.”
The Dogs’ Homes continues to support opposition to Greyhound racing in Tasmania. An e-petition drawing attention to cruelty within the taxpayer-funded industry was tabled before the Legislative Council as part of the ongoing push to ban the industry.
The petition gathered more than 3600 signatures in just 21 days. A similar petition two years ago, open for a six-month period, was signed by more than 13,500 people — the highest number of e-signatures ever tabled in Tasmanian Parliament. The latest petition received more than double the daily average of the 2022 signatures.
The Australian Capital Territory has outlawed Greyhound racing.
Taxpayers’ money gone to the dogs
TasRacing is funded primarily by Tasmanian taxpayers through an annual industry funding grant. The grant provides the industry with a minimum of $27 million a year across 20 years, increasing by CPI annually.
The Tasmanian Government funded the racing industry with $41 million of taxpayers’ money in the 2022-23 financial year.
That figure included $33.92 million under the annual industry funding grant and $7 million from the point of consumption tax on wagering, which is 15 per cent of the net wagering revenue from Tasmanian bets over an annual tax-free threshold of $150,000.
The state’s greyhound racing industry received $6.5 million of that money, an increase of 10 per cent on the previous year. The increase was used to raise prizemoney for participants.
In October 2023, the most comprehensive opinion poll conducted into greyhound racing in Tasmania found three quarters of Tasmanians opposed government funding of greyhound racing industry, with 55 per cent strongly opposed to it. The survey was conducted by EMRS, the state’s leading polling and research organisation.
The Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds says Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021 Census figures show there were 160 full-time equivalent workers employed by the entire racing industry in Tasmania.
The State Treasury website says Census data from 2016 showed just 0.08 per cent of the Tasmanian workforce reported being employed in racing-related professions as their main industry.
*This report uses information gathered by the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds and sourced from its “Exposing the Issues” report into greyhound racing funding around Australia.
