In 2024, shocking revelations highlighted the appalling suffering of greyhounds in NSW and the vileness at the heart of the racing industry.
An explosive report by the former chief vet of Greyhound Racing NSW rocked Australia in July 2024 with harrowing allegations of cruelty. There were also whistleblower allegations about corruption, nepotism and animal abuse in greyhound racing.
The NSW Government could no longer ignore the extent of the cruelty and corruption and called for an inquiry into Greyhound Racing NSW. Witnesses at the Drake Inquiry revealed financial mismanagement, lack of regulation and disastrous animal welfare issues. And a state government that treats greyhounds as political pawns. More on the Drake Inquiry below.
The scathing Drake Report
The Drake Inquiry Report was handed to the NSW Racing Minister Davis Harris on 31 July 2025. After widespread public pressure, the Drake Report and the Government response was finally published on 9 December 2025.
As expected the report highlighted that the NSW greyhound racing industry is guilty of extreme animal cruelty and “significant governance and operational failures“.
The Report “identified the need for a significant restructure of the industry” and made 65 recommendations designed to address systemic failings across animal welfare, track standards, reporting, integrity, financial practices, workplace culture, and governance.
The cowardly NSW Government response
In its weak and inadequate response to the Report, the NSW Government rejected key recommendations including:
- Limits on the numbers of greyhounds bred each year
- Halting the export of retired greyhounds to the USA (or anywhere outside Australia) for rehoming
- The suspension of greyhound racing if minimum track standards are not met
- Establishment of independent bodies to oversee both GRNSW and the industry regulator GWIC
The government also made it clear that industry sustainability and profitability would continue to take priority over greyhound welfare. This was highlighted in the GRNSW response with CEO Steve Griffin stating “We were really pleased that the Government has only accepted those recommendations where there’s clear benefit to the sport …”
By ignoring the scathing Report, the NSW Government has once again demonstrated their commitment to the racing industry at the expense of the dogs they sacrifice to the gambling industry.
The CPG response
The NSW Government did not respond to any of the 65 Drake Report recommendations in the standard government response format ie by directly indicating acceptance or non-acceptance.
Instead it suggested changes to the GRNSW Operating Licence. This is despite GRNSW currently operating in breach of its Operating Licence as highlighted in the Report. This is a dramatic failure in legislative and public accountability.
In response, CPG has specifically identified many of the issues with the NSW Government response in a 30 page document. We have also attempted to identify the Report recommendations accepted by the NSW Government through a review of their response.
Click here to view and download the CPG document.
1,153 greyhounds were reported deceased within the NSW racing industry in FY24-25. This horrific toll shows that on average a NSW racing greyhound is reported dead every 7.6 hours. Three greyhounds die every day. This is industrial carnage. The NSW greyhound racing industry was forced to GWIC was forced to provide their names to the NSW Parliament, together with the general causes of death. You can view the names of the victims of this cruel and greedy gambling industry here.
The GRNSW propaganda machine
Greyhound Racing NSW has been busy churning out propaganda since it held a “Future Summit” in May. This includes releasing an “Industry Future Blueprint” designed to pre-empt the release of the Drake Report.
GRNSW is preparing its participant base for a reduction in the number of tracks. It’s also expecting huge criticisms of the rehoming program, so is announcing a new so-called “welfare scheme“.
GRNSW has changed its leadership team and hired a new CEO. They will be able to minimise any criticisms by pointing to new reforms, and blame the previous leadership.
CEO Steve Griffin is obviously using his previous experience in working for regulator GWIC. Read more on the GRNSW blueprint for death.
GRNSW is cynically focusing on its image and its business. Despite their PR spin, the welfare of the greyhounds is never paramount.
On 11 July 2025, GRNSW CEO Steve Griffin claimed “fantastic results in terms of welfare“. This is despite 27 dogs dying in serious racing incidents between January and June 2025 and a total of 1,942 injuries. Read more in the CPG NSW Racing Report.
The Drake Inquiry
In July 2024, the NSW Government called for an inquiry into Greyhound Racing NSW. Gaming and Racing Minister David Harris said the inquiry would examine a number of complaints around GRNSW including track safety, animal welfare and its operation.
The inquiry was called just days after the handover of a damning report by GRNSW’s former chief veterinary officer Alex Brittan. Dr Brittan alleged that some dogs were being raced at a “barbaric” intensity, that re-homed animal figures were inflated and that some dogs were locked in metal cages. See more on the Brittan Report below.
The inquiry, known as the Drake Inquiry, was led by Lea Drake, Acting Commissioner of the Greyhound Welfare and Integrity Commission. The Inquiry called for public submissions and heard from 36 witnesses across 31 hearing days.
The greyhound racing industry was hammered during the inquiry hearings. Witnesses spoke of confused regulation, rehoming failures, no racetrack meeting minimum standards, dangerous tracks, animal abuse, and political interference.
Initially the Inquiry’s report was to be presented to the NSW Racing Minister David Harris at the end of December 2024. However, the Racing Minister announced that the deadline was extended to 31 July 2025 to allow the Inquiry to deal with “the high volume of submissions” and “issues raised so far“.
The six Terms of Reference for the Drake Inquiry included three directly related to greyhound welfare: track safety, greyhound welfare with a focus on rehoming, and accuracy in reporting. These were the areas that CPG focused on in its submission to the Inquiry.
Thank you to the 560 people who used the CPG email template to make submissions to the Drake Inquiry and the many hundreds more who made their own submissions.
The Brittan Report
The “Brittan Communique” followed weeks of revelations by whistleblowers who made disturbing allegations of corruption, nepotism and animal abuse in greyhound racing.
Brittan report part 1 and part 2, split into two parts due to size of file.
Below are just some of the areas highlighted in the report and why greyhound racing must end in NSW and across the country.
1. It is unreformable: “barbaric”, “reprehensible”, “unsustainable
Greyhound racing was given a second chance after the live baiting and mass killing of young greyhounds was exposed in 2016.
Yet eight years later the ex-chief vet of Greyhound Racing NSW, Alex Brittan, painted a damning picture of an industry that he alleges has utterly failed to reform.
He stated that “GRNSW’s internal stance and attitude to indentured animal welfare concerns is reprehensible”. Among his key criticisms:
- A huge increase in injured dogs due to more frequent racing
- Large numbers of greyhounds dying in cruel conditions
- The number of greyhounds rehomed greatly inflated “in order to maintain a facade of cleanliness”.
Despite increased regulation and an industry regulator funded with $20m of taxpayer money a year, the NSW greyhound racing industry has shown it cannot be reformed.
Greyhounds continue to be regarded as mere gambling products and brutally exploited to generate profits for betting firms.
2. Rehoming: “unsustainable morass” of suffering
The NSW greyhound racing industry has a huge oversupply problem as they keep breeding too many dogs to find the next winner. Ignoring calls for a breeding limit, they’re breeding greyhounds at an unsustainable rate that inevitably ends in “wastage”.
Alex Brittan alleges:
- Retired dogs were “trapped in the industry” because there were too many dogs.
- Half of the greyhounds that retired each year weren’t rehomed, with between 8,000 – 13,000 greyhounds “shuffled through the industry to paid commercial kennels”.
- GRNSW regards rehoming as an unsolvable problem “that will need to just die.”
- “They are not being rehomed, despite massive PR campaigns to promote the effectiveness of GRNSW rehoming policies.”
These numbers are supported by the industry regulator GWIC who stated in 2022, that there were around 4700 greyhounds who needed homes and 1300 homes available for them and that shortfall was increasing at around 30% a year.
The NSW racing industry refuses to introduce any sort of limit on breeding which has left thousands of discarded dogs with nowhere to go. Whistleblowers have documented appalling conditions at the Greyhounds As Pets facility at Wyee and questionable operation of the “Aussie Mates in the States” export program to the US.
“we’ve got corrugated iron off walls, rusty corrugated iron, you’ve got injuries to greyhounds there. Obviously, you’ve got fences and gates that allow the dogs to get their paws and heads underneath and get squashed underneath it. You’ve got head injuries, leg injuries and a whole range of other injuries.”
Ray Hadley, 2GB
Whistleblowers from the Wyee GAP facilities sent dozens of photographs that showed appalling conditions at Wyee and the dreadful treatment of greyhounds. Read more: Shocking revelations expose vileness of greyhound racing
3. Industrial-scale death and suffering
Greyhound racing causes death and suffering on a massive scale.
NSW was Australia’s deadliest state in 2023, with stewards’ reports showing that 70 dogs died racing.
But the total number of all greyhound deaths is unimaginable. Brittan alleges that the complete number of NSW greyhound deaths in 2023 was 3384, more than three times as many as that publicly reported by the industry regulator GWIC.
Brittan claims that causes of death provided by industry participants commonly included snake bites or “idiopathic” – or unclear – causes which were not investigated.
And despite a $30 million taxpayer-funded track safety scheme, the injury rate is out of control. Brittan alleges that, due to the $60 paid for each dog to race, there had been the greatest increase in the rate of race injuries “in the history of greyhound racing in NSW”. Injuries increased by more than 16 times.
The Brittan report also highlighted the thousands of dogs kept in appalling conditions because they cannot be rehomed: “There are cases of extreme distress, deep claw marks gouged all over the inside of metal cages and recent pools of blood from toe nails that had been ripped off from clawing at the cage door in distress”.
Some of the 42 dogs who died in agony on NSW tracks while GRNSW was having “it’s best year ever”. Another 28 dogs were killed at trials or after being removed from NSW tracks with serious injuries. Read more: Seriously, a desperate and cynical campaign to fool the public and Lethal Tracks report reveals the true nature of the carnage on NSW racetracks
4. Deceitful, untrustworthy, poorly regulated
GRNSW – and its political cheerleaders – have long repeated the mantra that animal welfare in greyhound racing is paramount. The events of 2024 have blown apart those false claims.
The revelations about GAP and the Aussie Mates US program, an internal report on GRNSW corruption that won’t be released to the racing minister, and the Brittan disclosures have shown that GRNSW’s propaganda machine is based on fantasy.
The week before Brittan’s report was tabled in parliament, GRNSW launched a campaign of full-page ads in newspapers proclaiming the “best year ever”. Then CEO Macaulay resigned.
The racing industry’s fondness for exaggeration is also seen in its use of IER reports to mislead the Australian community about the economic contribution of the racing industry. The recent NSW IER report also exaggerated the number of people employed in the NSW racing industry by 13 times. Read the NSW Smoke and Mirrors report to see how the NSW government uses economic misinformation to mislead the community.
The NSW racing industry also markets greyhound racing as “family friendly entertainment”. This is a cynical and dangerous ploy to distract the community from the animal suffering and encourage the next generation of problem gamblers. The NSW greyhound racing industry allows children as young as 12 to join the racing industry.
And where is the regulator in all these animal welfare scandals and failings?
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