Not merely did the right-wing New Zealand government yesterday move to ban greyhound “racing”, it announced emergency legislation to ban greyhound abusers from killing their dogs, given they’ll no longer be able to exploit them. Says a lot about an industry that purports to love its animals that governments assume the very moment they’ll no longer be able to make money off them, they’ll kill them.
The rationale for the ban? In the words of Kiwi political fixture Winston Peters, “despite significant progress made by the greyhound racing industry in recent years, the percentage of dogs being injured remains persistently high and the time has come to make a call in the best interest of the animals.”
In Australia, we haven’t even got to the “significant progress” part. In Victoria — the deadliest state for dogs — euthanasia and injury rates are going up not down, despite attempts by the industry to hide the numbers of dogs killed. Overbreeding is still leading to mass euthanasia of healthy dogs as industry-funded rehoming efforts falter and scams like the dispatch of dogs to the United States face criticism.
In NSW, courtesy of whistleblower Alex Brittan, we know that dogs are still being raced at “barbaric” intensity (partly as a result of Greyhound Racing NSW incentivising over-racing of dogs through its taxpayer-subsidised prize money), dogs are routinely locked in cages where they rip out claws trying to free themselves, and rehoming rates are inflated by the industry. The NSW government’s response, via the alleged industry regulator, was to try to block the report from being published.
In Queensland, the number of dogs killed in races is already 50% higher this year than in 2023, according to numbers compiled by the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds. In South Australia the number of deaths is up one-third; in WA the death toll is already 23 compared to 17 for the whole of 2023. The national death toll this year, at 124, is already above the 2023 figure of 120. And those are just the dogs killed on tracks after (often horrific) injuries incurred at high speed. The industry refuses to provide proper accountability for dogs euthanised — whether injuries are survivable or not — off track following injuries.
All with the generous assistance of you, the taxpayer.
Greyhound racing is banned around the world and now occurs only in a small number of remaining countries. In the United States, the vast majority of states have banned it, and only one state, West Virginia, has active racing tracks. In Scotland a law banning it is before Parliament. With the New Zealand ban, Australia now looks ever more an animal torture outlier — one that encourages a depraved industry, run by depraved people, with taxpayer money spent by depraved politicians.
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