Should the battlers form of racing be banned

[IQS.RLOW]

You'll love this guy then...

[AiA in Atlanta]

jesus. just when i thought it couldn't get any worse than durianrider ...

[Outlaw Yogi]

Replace animal racing with pasty vegan/vegetarian racing or have them in arena style slap fights to the death.

The Romans put women up against midgets in the colosseum.
The Christians were poor sports and refused to fight, so lions were
brought in so the games could continue.

Replace animal live exports with vegan/vegetarian live exports.
Animals are saved and we get rid of the whining fucks- the only issue would be that no one else wants the useless turds. I figure the best bet would be to ship them to ISIS for live target/beheading practice.

Years ago I said feminists should be rounded up with cattle dogs, put on sheep transport ships and sold to Muslims.
Now I think vegetarians and feminists should have GPS trackers fitted prior to selling to Muslims, and then carpet bomb the area when the GPS trackers stop moving. IS sounds like the ideal customer.

[mantra]

I love meat as much as any carnivore, but some industries just keep proving themselves to be inhumane over and over again. Why do we export live animals to such brutal countries. Meat here has become ridiculously expensive and we've closed down most of our abattoirs. Surely we've got a good enough market here for the cattle and sheep industry to thrive.

I know that banning greyhound racing in NSW is going to bring about even worse repercussions. We used to have a lot of strays in my area and the the council cleaned it up years ago, but early yesterday morning I saw a beautiful greyhound which had been dumped, wandering around aimlessly. This is the first stray greyhound I've ever seen, but there are going to be a lot more and the disposal of them will be even more inhumane.

[Outlaw Yogi]

‘Social Licence’ dogs industry to its death

http://www.gotbav.org.au/sociallicenced ... toitsdeath

Reproduced from The Australian 30/07/16


‘Social Licence’ dogs industry to its death by Hedley Thomas

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”. 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 time frame, 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, repres¬enting 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 subject¬ive 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