The Victorian government — Australia’s biggest-taxing government, which is running a budget deficit and mired in more than $150 billion in debt — is spending more than $40 million a year propping up the state’s lethal greyhound racing industry, the state’s Parliamentary Budget Office has found.
Banning the industry would generate more than $20 million in net savings that would reach nearly $90 million over four years and $260 million by 2035, the PBO found, in response to a costing request from Animal Justice MP Georgie Purcell.
The Victorian government last year increased its point of consumption tax (POCT) on gambling and then lifted the proportion it returns to the state’s animal-exploiting industries. It is currently handing more than $40 million a year to the greyhound abuse industry, in addition to individual grants from programs like the Racing and Training Facilities program. The Victorian PBO estimates that if greyhound racing was ended, it would lose around $20 million a year in POCT revenue.
Victoria is a particularly lethal place for dogs: 29 have been killed racing this year in the state alone, more than twice as many as the next most lethal state, Western Australia. According to statistics kept by the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds, 365 dogs have suffered major injuries in Victoria this year.
In a recent report, the state’s “Greyhound Racing Integrity Unit” gave a long list of cases of abuse, negligence, doping and live baiting in just the three months from April to June, with offenders given trivial fines or short suspensions, with the penalties often suspended.
Earlier this year, the industry’s governing body, the ailing Greyhound Racing Victoria, slashed 25 positions and cut its executive team to just three, with the position responsible for dog welfare and rehoming “absorbed“. As Purcell told Crikey, “It’s always the dogs that come last.”
“In a cost of living crisis where people are clearly struggling and every dollar counts, pouring tens of millions into an industry that combines animal abuse and gambling is inexcusable. This report now confirms that it has no economic value either,” Purcell said.
“In the same four-year period that the government plans to waste nearly $90 million to prop up greyhound racing, it is also spending $165 million on preventing and responding to gambling harm. The two are simply not compatible, and only further demonstrates the inappropriate and dangerous relationships that our governments continue to share with gambling industries.”
Bernard Keane has cared for rescue greyhounds since 2016.
