The discovery in August that Australian greyhounds were being “exported” to the UK and re-shipped to China — a location to which Australian dogs are not permitted to be directly sold given the appalling treatment they face — has shone a light on the federal government’s refusal to prohibit greyhound exports. State body Greyhound Racing Victoria is currently investigating the UK export case.
Notionally, greyhounds can’t be exported without a permit from industry body Greyhounds Australasia (GA) — which won’t approve export to destinations like China, Hong Kong, Macau (home of the sickening Canidrome, now closed) and Vietnam, which have a record of animal abuse.
The requirement has been effective in reducing the number of greyhounds directly exported to such countries. But it is an industry-run scheme, with no external sanctions for breaches and no legislative support. Some in the industry evade the requirement either by shipping via countries like the UK or, potentially, New Zealand, to where most exported Australian greyhounds are sent — or ignore the requirement altogether.
To prevent evasion, the industry itself has been calling for the federal government — which controls exports of “prescribed goods”, a category that greyhounds fall under — to intervene and legislate the export licensing requirement, since all the way back to 2005.
Former Labor agriculture shadow Joel Fitzgibbon examined this in 2015: Greyhounds Australasia said then it had been lobbying the government to block the export of all greyhounds without GA’s approval, but then-agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce didn’t even respond to GA’s requests on the issue.
Joyce’s complete lack of interest in the issue was consistent with his disgusting record on animal welfare.
Greyhounds Australasia told Crikey it tried again with a different minister — Joyce’s successor David Littleproud. “GA made a formal request in November 2018 for the introduction of greyhound passports for any dog that was to be exported,” CEO Cherie Nicholl said. “In February 2019 the federal minister for agriculture and water resources advised GA that the state and territory ministers did not support GA’s proposal for a greyhound passport scheme that would become a requirement for export.”
So, according to Littleproud, the states are the ones blocking the export licences (even though exports are a Commonwealth responsibility). That’s quite a turnaround. In 2015, then-Victorian racing minister Martin Pakula savaged Joyce for refusing to legislate the export licences.
So if it wasn’t Victoria, which state is opposed? NSW is the major source of greyhound exports — but it’s not NSW. According to a NSW government report earlier this year, in 2017, NSW “wrote to the then Commonwealth minister for agriculture and water resources to advocate for strengthened regulation and oversight of greyhound exports”.
Maybe Western Australia, then? WA wrote to Littleproud in 2018, too, urging greyhound passports.
We asked Littleproud to say which state opposed greyhound passports. Then he changed his tune. His department now claims not that the states blocked it but that it isn’t even a matter for the Commonwealth, telling us “greyhounds are not livestock and as such there are no licensing requirements”.
What’s curious about all this is that in 2016 Littleproud’s department, having been shamed by the ABC’s reporting of the treatment of exported greyhounds in hellholes like Macau, supported greyhound passports. The McHugh inquiry in NSW, which devoted a chapter to exports in 2016, found that Agriculture had supported the adoption of GA’s greyhound passport as a condition of export. And contrary to Littleproud’s current stance that the Commonwealth has no role, greyhound exports are already regulated by the Commonwealth under the Export Control (Animals) Order 2004.
To resolve the impasse, the Green’s Mehreen Faruqi proposes an outright ban on greyhound exports. And GA has now made a new industry requirement that all racing greyhounds be desexed upon retirement. Most exports are now for breeding, so this will further reduce export numbers.
The only question remaining, therefore, is why Littleproud and the Nationals continue to stand in the way of a reform that the greyhound industry itself, and the states, have been calling for for years. Plain bastardry seems an unlikely reason, but it’s one of the few plausible ones.
This appalling activity (I will not dignify it by calling it a ‘sport’) should be banned everywhere in Australia. It has no redeeming features. It should not be permitted in any country that regards itself as being ‘civilized’.
What can we do to stop this on-going cruelty? Most Australians are indifferent. Our letters fall on Littleproud’s deaf ears, Animals Australia are aware of the horrors of greyhound racing & exporting animals. But there must still be money in it; why else continue these appalling practices?
I am not sure just how to answer your question Julie.
All I can say is that I hope organizations such as Animals Australia and PETA can keep campaigning against these and other abominable practices that involve cruelty to animals for the ‘entertainment’ of humans. People like Lyn White do an absolutely marvelous job in this regard. She should be Australian of the Year.
Gives you some idea into the low quality of the people in Australia!
Robert, I assume you hold the same view of thoroughbred and standard bred horse racing? No doubt you recall the ABC 7.30 investigation in November 2019 into the dark side of horse racing where retired race horses were mistreated and killed in a most inhumane manner. It was soon swept under the carpet because the Sport of Kings involves the wealthy and prominent.
Look at the role that 2GB and other conservative media played in both the greyhound and horse racing scandals. Cost Baird his government. It’s hard for a politician to stand tall on issues like this when they know they’ll take a serious beating.
And the then NSW Labor leader, soon to be out on his fat ear for other reasons, jumped in feet first to defend the workers’ playtime.
Too young to have done the same for cockfighting, bull & bear baiting?
Exactly
Keane wonders why “Littleproud and the Nationals continue to stand in the way of a reform that the greyhound industry itself, and the states, have been calling for for years. Plain bastardry seems an unlikely reason…”
I’d say plain bastardry is likely, even if it’s not the only or even the main reason. The Nationals subscribe to the general neo-liberal ideology that finds fault with governments doing anything (other than pouring money into their mates’ pockets and subsidising their personal interests), so obstructing any regulation or control of such activities is pretty much core politics for them. Might as well call it bastardry.
https://coalitionprotectgreyhounds.wordpress.com/2020/10/24/australian-greyhound-exports/
Interestingly the government website makes it very difficult to ascertain to which nations these dogs are still being sent to be brutalised in the name of Sport
Thank you for keeping this issue alive. Most of the media seem to have lost interest.
Littleproud *always* has little to be proud of. Never was a politician better named.
I’d think plain bastardry is a very plausible explanation. Littleproud is one of those people I used to think was probably a decent person and competent minister, but he now has substantial form in doing nothing and blaming the States for pretty much anything at all. If it is economical to send old greyhounds half-way around the world, presumably by plane, to some unmentionable fate, the costs must be be negligible and someone is making big bucks from misery. Not much to be proud of in that – perhaps nominative determinism has brought Littleproud to this portfolio.
You are not personally anointed as a successor by Joyce for being a decent person Littleprouds relations convicted of water theft.