After a two-year ‘reform’ period, the SA government is backing greyhound racing while acknowledging that the risks to racing greyhounds will continue.
According to a SA Government-commissioned report, those risks include “live baiting”, “unauthorised euthanasia of dogs”, “injury or death of greyhounds while racing”, and a rehoming challenge driven by “the oversupply of dogs”.
UNDERMINING THE PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY PROCESS. The SA Government has announced that greyhound racing will continue at the same time that a Parliamentary Committee is considering a ban. The deadline for submissions to the Committee is 9 October 2026, it is open to all, and we encourage everyone who cares about greyhound suffering to make a submission, no matter how long or short.
Report highlights greyhound welfare still a "work in progress"
A final report on the reform period written by Greyhound Industry Reform Inspector Sal Perna, stated that Greyhound Racing SA had responded to 73 of the 78 recommendations allocated to them.
Many of these recommendations were aimed at improving governance and accountability, highlighting GRSA’s mismanagement and unreliability. Recommendations around doping and betting restrictions emphasised that the industry’s entire economic model relies on gambling revenue.
Mr Perna said the remaining five recommendations are “still a work in progress” and that he believes they can be accomplished “in the near future”. Not surprisingly, the five recommendations all relate to greyhound welfare and involve overbreeding, rehoming failures, inadequate greyhound housing and mismanaged animal welfare complaints.
Well good luck with that. As we’ve seen in every Australian state and around the world, these are structural defects that can never be fixed.
The lack of any meaningful improvement in greyhound welfare sees the industry and the Government reduced to claiming credit for failed safety initiatives such as double-arm lures. In 2019, Victoria rolled out double-arm lures to all its tracks. Victoria is now responsible for more racing-related greyhound deaths than any other state.
As in all other states, look at the cowardly government response to the damning Drake Report, the SA Government is fiddling around the edges of greyhound welfare. They’re doing this to pacify a community increasingly opposed to greyhound racing and to appease the powerful gambling lobby.
SA to introduce failed regulatory model
The Government has also accepted the other major report recommendation and is going to establish an “appropriate, fit-for-purpose integrity body”. This is a model that has failed across Australia.
It’s worth noting that QRIC, the so-called independent Queensland racing regulator, is about to be folded into Racing Queensland, the body responsible for the commercial success of the industry. A conflict of interest that fails greyhounds on every front and increases the taxpayer dollars required to keep the industry afloat.
QRIC Deputy Commissioner Kim Kelly resigned in protest ahead of the change, noting the new model compromises a truly independent integrity body, stating “this is not what I signed up for”.
Reflecting the SA Government’s indifference to greyhound welfare, legislation to implement the integrity body won’t be introduced to Parliament until next year.
It is significant that the RSPCA recommendation that “the industry should not be supported unless inherent animal welfare problems are recognised and resolved” was marked as a policy statement which couldn’t be measured.
Insulting to the community and deadly for the dogs
In yet another example of the insulting treatment handed out to the community by the Government, they have deliberately released this report while a Parliamentary Committee considers a ban on greyhound racing.
That’s why it is even more important that people make a submission to the committee reminding them why most people in Australia oppose this gambling-fuelled animal abuse.
