TasRacing Correctly Identifies No Social Licence

TasRacing is dead right recognising the Greens and many in the community draw a line between Anthony Bullock and the failure of the entire racing industry to be able to prevent animal cruelty.
 
After the 2015 parliamentary Greyhound Inquiry, the racing industry has been on notice to reform and build its social licence, but the evidence of animal advocates and whistleblowers demonstrates the industry has no intention of willingly ensuring it’s clean. Instead, they have repeatedly shown themselves incapable of policing the horse and greyhound racers that have been allowed to become “too big to fail”.
 
The facts stand for themselves. The recent investigation that served greyhound racing kingpin Anthony Bullock with a lifetime ban would never have occurred without published footage taken by an animal advocate group. Many complaints had been registered over years against Bullock’s treatment of his dogs, but investigations repeatedly found “nothing to see here”.
 
The horse racing industry is currently under investigation for allegations of race fixing, team driving and animal welfare abuses. Again, this only occurred after relentless public pressure about the dismissal and inaction of TasRacing and the Office of Racing Integrity on successive whistleblowers’ complaints.
 
The racing industry is driven by a profit motive, which at the heart uses defenceless animals as the mechanism for maximising profits from gambling. It’s an “industry”, a million miles from a sporting Sunday country race.
 
It has only ever been whistleblowers, animal advocates, the Greens and wider public pressure that has forced TasRacing to act and stop animal cruelty and racing fixing. Unfortunately, this says everything about the stinky state of this industry.