SA Government’s Ashton inquiry

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The SA Government gave its dog racing industry two years to reform. With six months gone as of November 2024, Minister Hildyard has said zero about improvements made to date. The new Greyhound Inspector, Sal Perna, reports directly to her.

See CPG’s report on the failings of SA’s greyhound industry regulation.

Despite drone footage released to the media which showed greyhounds being kicked and dragged, the SA Government gave the SA dog racing industry another two years to clean up its act.

The implementation of the Ashton inquiry report‘s recommendations are to be overseen by the Greyhound Industry Reform Inspector (GIRI). Because the SA Government took months to appoint to this position, the GIRI won’t start until July 2024. This means the greyhound racing industry has had an extra six months without oversight.

Sadly, the South Australian Government is proposing to maintain the current company structure with the same organisation responsible for both regulating and promoting the sector. This type of model has failed many times already in Australia. Consequently, all recommendations about penalty guides and tougher sanctions will be subject to the same conflicts of interest. 

This is the fundamental problem with the current SA regulatory system. Unless this is fixed, greyhounds will suffer the result of the same incompetent regulation that already exists. This situation is absurd and utterly inconsistent with best practice regulation. In fact, it’s the equivalent of making the Australian Tax Office responsible for promoting Australian industry, as well as investigating and prosecuting them for tax breaches.

Will the SA Government’s reform program make the same mistakes made in NSW – see here.

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