Australia’s violent abuse of gentle greyhounds

Just over a week ago, during a race at the “safest track in the state,” three year old Ted Robbo died after straddling the rail and “making contact with multiple upright posts”. Two weeks earlier, also at Taree, two year old Shirl’s Rocket had suffered “a compound fracture of the off side radius and ulna and a suspected spinal cord injury”, also after straddling the rail and “making heavy contact with multiple rail posts”. He was “euthanised”. After millions of dollars spent redeveloping the Taree site, this is the greyhound industry’s idea of safe.

In 2016, the McHugh inquiry’s investigations discovered GRNSW had been deceiving the public by “deliberately misreporting the extent of injuries suffered by greyhounds at racetracks” and deliberately failing “to make available to the public information about deaths of greyhounds at racetracks”. In 2025, NSW stewards’ reports do now include death and injury information, although some of the language used still seeks to conceal serious injuries, and what GRNSW presents visually to the public remains a lie.

When I recently searched for the race replay after Ted Robbo’s catastrophic injury at Taree, it was nowhere to be found on GRNSW web pages. When I checked later, the replay did appear but with Ted Robbo’s fall edited out of the footage. The replay of the Shirl’s Rocket race has not been available at all online.

When a greyhound falls or dies in NSW, those race replays are regularly “missing” from the GRNSW web pages or have been sanitised to remove the deaths, injuries, disturbing falls or other incidents. The replay of a race involving a distressing incident at Wentworth Park, just last night, is currently nowhere to be found on GRNSW web pages.

This censorship can only be seen as a continuation of past behaviour, attempting to deceive the public as to the true nature of greyhound racing.

So far this year, CPG has reported eleven greyhounds killed on tracks around the country (listed below) and 893 injuries reported at track. Many of the injured dogs will not survive, dying later because of the severity of injuries or because a decision is made to end their lives. Listed as injured in Hobart (Tas) last week, with “a fractured left hock,” the status of Perfect Shadows now appears as deceased. Another dog, Rock Burner, injured at Dapto a few weeks ago and given a 90 day incapacitation period, is also now listed as dead.

Many of the injured dogs are killed because, temporarily or permanently, they can no longer race, not because they are beyond saving or rehabilitation. Many more greyhounds are regularly injured and killed off-track for various reasons. One breeder giving evidence to the 2016 McHugh inquiry stated, “dogs who don’t have the instinct [to chase] or the tools to be a consistent winner — well a good handler can spot it a mile away … Most of the time I’d drown the pups”.

In his evidence to the Drake inquiry, Dr Brittan said he had discovered unreported off-track deaths that only became known during the Greyhound Welfare and Intergrity Commission’s (GWIC) “proof of life events”. Dr Brittan told the inquiry, ‘they’d ring up a participant and say, “Our records show you’ve got ten dogs on site. Can you please confirm that,” and the participant would go, “Oh, actually, I’ve only got six. Four have died but, whoops, I forgot to phone in and tell you”’.

Dr Brittan was also asked if he thinks greyhound racing “as it now stands” in NSW should continue. His answer, “at this point in time I don’t feel that greyhound racing in NSW should be continuing”.

Greyhound racing is on its way out in Australia and around the world, it’s just a matter of time. Polls have consistently shown that most Australians do not support this cruel form of gambling.

These sensitive dogs belong on couches, not on racing tracks, and the urgent question our politicians need to answer is how much longer will you wait? How many more of these beautiful dogs will have to suffer and die before you can find your backbone and ban this cruelty forever?