Ms O’CONNOR – The reason we are standing here debating the Racing Integrity and Regulation Bill of 2024 is that both the greyhound and the thoroughbred and harness racing industries in Tasmania and across the country, in fact, are losing their social licence. The member for McIntyre quite correctly identified a lack of public confidence in the integrity of the industry. That did not come from nowhere, that came from evidence that has been presented by whistleblowers, industry insiders, animal welfare advocates and, indeed, we established this parliament back in 2015, a Joint Select Committee into the Greyhound Racing Industry, which was in response to a Four Corners story by journalist Caro Meldrum Hannah that exposed disgusting, obscene levels of cruelty towards greyhounds, dogs that were clearly, and still are, bred simply to make money and, when their money‑making days are over, they are discarded.
When we established that inquiry into greyhound racing, we had evidence come before us from both industry participants, animal welfare advocates and other people who had observed some of this cruelty that was a challenge to us as a parliament and we produced an imperfect report.
I had initially been appointed Chair and was ditched as Chair because I had called for a ban on greyhound racing, which the Greens maintain still should be banned. What came out of that was a really clear understanding in the public’s mind that this industry is breeding hundreds and hundreds of greyhounds each year, many of which never enter the racing industry and most of which have their lives shortened.
Shortened either by massive injuries on the track or shortened because they could not run fast enough, they were not worth feeding to their owner or trainer and they were discarded. The word that has been used for that officially‑sanctioned practice of discarding these beautiful dogs is ‘wastage.’
Even that term itself points to something being a thing or a commodity, not a beautiful, sentient, living creature. We know dogs are sentient, we know horses are sentient. We know these animals are aware of their existence. They can experience pleasure and pain.
Anyone who has a dog, who gets home from work and sees the way your dog reacts to you, knows that dogs feel love as well and this, in fact, in terms of the chemical makeup of a dog’s brain, is not dissimilar to ours in terms of dopamine and happiness. So we need to be mindful that when we stand here and talk about a racing industry, we are talking about animals that are bred to make money, and it actually reflects a long‑time human practice of exploiting animals for profit, which we need to separate from the fact that we have agricultural producers, many of us are meat eaters, and there are clearly different approaches to animals that we produce to eat.
I might say, however, even in saying that, members will be aware that a number of our abattoirs here in Tasmania, thanks to the incredible work of our animal welfare whistleblowers, have also been exposed as torturing animals behind closed doors.
However, we are here today talking about the exploitation of animals for profit and a utilitarian approach in law to these animals. In terms of the structure of the bill and the structure that it will establish, we can acknowledge that the long‑time position where there was a separation between the commercial arm, Tasracing, and the integrity arm, the Office of Racing Integrity, will be dissolved as a result of this legislation off the back of the recommendations of the Monteith Review.
In fact, when you go back and have a look at the recommendations of the greyhound joint select inquiry, we strongly recommended across party lines and with independents that those functions should be maintained separately. And here we are bringing stewards back in under Tasracing, responding to a growing level of public disgust about the racing industries by banging together Tasracing and the animal welfare and integrity functions. It is right to question whether it will work and whether or not it will deliver improvements in integrity and animal welfare in the industry. The bill also establishes the Tasmanian Racing Integrity Commissioner with powers to set integrity and animal welfare standards for the racing industry and very strong investigatory functions.
But it will be in how those standards are developed, whether or not there is best practice applied. It will be in that where we know what the value has been, or otherwise, in changing the structure that currently exists, which is also clearly an abject failure. And those standards, they need to be consulted with a broad range of stakeholders, but particularly with animal welfare stakeholders, which is why one of the amendments that we are proposing is that the welfare integrity advisory committee is able to consult more broadly on any standards put forward by the commissioner. I will be urging members to support that amendment.
The commissioner will have broad referral powers, including to Tasmania Police, the Integrity Commission, Tasracing and appropriate bodies, enabling it to operate within the national racing system. The bill also establishes the Integrity and Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, which will have representatives from RSPCA Tasmania. I just want to take this opportunity to thank all of those animal lovers who every day advocate and work towards a genuinely just society where we treat all animals with respect and we respect their intrinsic right to exist and not just to exist but to have a good life.
I thank RSPCA Tasmania, Dogs Home of Tasmania, the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses, the numerous wonderful people who were there to stand up for greyhounds like Greyhounds Run Free and also Animal Liberation Tasmania. I was very glad that so many members, so many of my colleagues, came along this morning to the briefing that we organised with our animal welfare stakeholders. But the bill also changes the integrity responsibilities of Tasracing so it will be operationally responsible for all three codes of racing including pre‑race day and race day management, stewards and daily animal welfare. In the fact sheet attached to the bill package, the first line says – and, boy, this is big if true:
The Racing Regulation and Integrity Bill of 2024 is made to regulate thoroughbred harness and greyhound racing, to ensure the integrity of persons involved in such racing and to safeguard the welfare of animals and for related purposes.
That is a big claim to attach to this legislation, particularly given the history, the history which so many of us are aware of.
I wanted to talk a little bit about animal sentience, because we can stand up here and make a contribution on this legislation in the abstract, and I think it was the member for McIntyre who was talking about just words on a page, which is what legislation so often is: words on a page, and then it becomes law.
What we are talking about here today, Madam Deputy President, will have a profound impact on thousands of blameless animals. If anyone wants to better understand the sentience of animals, I refer them to this wonderful book. All members should consider it, because we will be back in here with some Animal Welfare Act amendments. This wonderful book, Australian Animal Law: Content, Context, and Critique by Elizabeth Ellis, but also just to look at to some of the evidence of animal sentience.
There is a great article here from the New York Times: Dogs are people too. It says, because dogs cannot speak, scientists have relied on behavioural observations to infer what dogs are thinking. It is a tricky business. You cannot ask a dog why he does something, and you certainly cannot ask him how he feels. The prospect of ferreting out animal emotions scares many scientists. After all, animal research is big business. It has been easy to sidestep the difficult questions about animal sentience and emotions, because they have been unanswerable until now.
By looking directly at their brains and bypassing the constraints of behaviourism, MRIs can tell us about dogs’ internal states. Their MRIs are conducted in loud, confined spaces. People do not like them, but you cannot study brain function properly without looking at them. From the beginning, we have treated dogs as persons in this research. The journalist dog, Callie, was the first, a rescue dog.
What did they found, she says is although we are just beginning to answer basic questions about the canine brain, you cannot ignore the striking similarity between dogs and humans in both the structure and function of a key brain region, the caudate nucleus. Rich in dopamine receptors, the caudate sits between the brainstem and the cortex. In humans, the caudate plays a key role in the anticipation of things we enjoy, like food, love and money.
But we can flip this association around and infer what a person is thinking just by measuring caudate activity. Specific parts of the caudate stand out for their consistent activation to many things that humans enjoy. Caudate activation is so consistent that under the right circumstances, it can predict our preferences for food, music, and even beauty. In dogs, we found that activity in the caudate increased in response to hand signals indicating food. The caudate also activated to the smells of familiar people and in preliminary tests, it activated to the return of an owner who had momentarily stepped out of view.
Do these findings prove that dogs love us? Not quite. But many of the same things that activate the human caudate, which are associated with positive emotions, also activate the dog caudate. The ability to experience positive emotions like love and attachment would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child and this ability suggests a rethinking of how we treat dogs.
Let us not forget, Madam Deputy President, that greyhounds are definitely dogs, even though, under law, they are effectively classified as livestock.
In terms of a definition of sentience, sentient animals have feelings that matter to them. Although being able to feel is at the core of what it means to be sentient, sentience is commonly associated with other capabilities, such as consciousness, the ability to learn and remember things.
One of the most remarkable of all animals and certainly one of my favourite animals on earth, is the corvid, or the crow. Anyone who has observed the way ravens interact would be of no doubt at all they are the most intelligent bird on earth. Of all the world’s birds they are the greatest survivors, problem solvers, communicators. They give gifts, Madam Deputy President.
If you have befriended a group of corvids, ravens, or crows, they recognise faces. They have a view of who is a good person and a bad person and there have been stories of attachments formed between corvids and human beings, where the person who feeds the corvid is left little presents like bottle tops with ferns threaded through them but perhaps their most remarkable story of animal sentience of all relates to the African Grey Parrot, Alex.
Alex was Dr Pepperberg’s parrot and his name is an acronym for Avian Learning Experiment. He was bought from a pet store in Chicago in June 1977 when he was about a year old and so Dr Pepperberg started training Alex in language and so he was taught to recognise a variety of different colours, objects, materials, actions and he possessed a vocabulary of over 100 words to identify them with.
He knew at least 50 individual objects and could count quantities of up to six –
Mrs Hiscutt – Through you, Madam Deputy Chair. I just wonder whether the honourable member knows that the sound the African Grey Parrot makes? It just so happens that I do.
Ms O’CONNOR – Go on, go on.
Mrs Hiscutt – *Parrot noises*
Ms O’CONNOR – That is really beautiful.
Madam DEPUTY CHAIR It is really important information in the Racing Integrity Bill, I might just draw members back to what we were talking about. Thanks for that wonderful rendition from the Leader.
Ms O’CONNOR – Alex even understood the concept of zero, a number that means nothing. When presented with an object, he would be asked such questions as what colour, what matter or what shape, and he had a very high rate of accuracy with his responses. His ability to understand and pose his own questions was a ground-breaking occurrence in itself as he was the first and only non-human ever to answer a question and one of his most impressive moments was when he asked an existential question about his own appearance.
He had been presented with a mirror and after observing himself from a moment, he asked, what colour? Then he learned the word grey, the colour of his feathers, after having it taught to him six times. Now, sadly, Alex died unexpectedly in September of 2007 at the age of 31, much younger than most grey parrots live.
The last thing he was known to say was a few parting words during his nightly goodbyes exchanged with Dr Pepperberg after she put him in his cage, he said, ‘you be good, see you tomorrow, I love you’.
No question, but animals are sentient beings. So, we need to be mindful of that, as we debate this legislation today, and look, I am sure all members are, I do not mean to be matronising, I am sure all members are.
Honourable members may have read the article that was in the Sydney Morning Herald in June of this year, which sent another shockwave through the greyhound racing industry, another nail in its coffin of social legitimacy and this is when the former New South Wales greyhound racing chief vet in his departure document told Greyhound New South Wales that he was talking about the state of dogs in the industry. He asked about the capacity and quality of trackside vets and their willingness to euthanize rather than treat injured dogs. So, the default has been to kill the dog rather than to send it to a vet as we would our own.
He said that he had seen cases of dogs in extreme distress at racing tracks. He said, quote,
There have been deep claw marks gouged all over the inside of metal cages and recent pools of blood from toenails that have been ripped off from clawing the cage door.
The level of animal distress is appalling and can neither be condoned nor excused. An industry that generates $3.8 billion spent per annum can have cages and facilities that are so rotten and rusted is utterly appalling.
The report, which sent shock waves through the industry, also alleged rehoming rates were inflated, dogs raced at unhealthy intensity while suffering from a massive rise in injuries and some practises such as just two days of rest between races, were barbaric, echoing a former High Court judge who in 2016 found dog racing had welfare integrity and governance issues that could not be remedied. Britain said the industry was not only unsustainable but quote:
A morass of exploitation and suffering.
This was confirmed in the Mercury newspaper again, in an opinion piece by the former manager of the Greyhound adoption program, Lianne Salerno. Lianne was responding to some dialogue in the other place over this very bill, to the proposed Greens’ amendment to require Tasracing to operate efficiently, effectively and humanely. There were a number of comments made by members of the major parties about how much greyhound trainers just love their dogs, and I am sure some do. I would not say that of the state’s biggest greyhound trainer, Anthony Bullock.
Lianne Salerno was speaking almost directly to Mr Winter and Ms Howlett, the minister, when she wrote in her article:
I wish I could show them just a fraction of what I witnessed in two years as manager of Tasracing’s Greyhound Adoption Program at Mangalore. (This facility is designed to rehabilitate a proportion of discarded racing greyhounds to prepare them for new lives as domestic pets).
Two months ago, after a long struggle, I was sacked as manager of the GAP facility. I accept some will accuse me of sour grapes and turn away from what I have to say.
The fact is I was sought out and headhunted from the mainland by the previous Tasracing animal welfare manager. Tas Racing pleaded with me to come to Tasmania to oversee a new more welfare- focused GAP.
I’m a qualified vet nurse and animal behaviourist. I remain part of the Army Reserve, and I have worked in tough outback communities. My employment record was previously impeccable.
I’m no wimp or bleeding heart. I had an open mind about racing – or I wouldn’t have uprooted my life and my family and taken the job.
My brief was to run the Greyhound Adoption Program independently from the racing industry (as minister Howlett is on the record as stating it should be). I was to introduce a compassionate approach in line with changing public expectations.
That all changed practically overnight when the chief executive was ousted and the welfare manager was made redundant.
The new regime wanted a different approach. As the public record shows (Mercury, March 17, 2023) there was an immediate edict from the top in favour of killing more greyhounds. I challenged the edict. Naturally it didn’t endear me to the new managers at Tasracing.
What I saw at GAP was a shock. For a start, the ‘facilities’ were outdated, sub-optimal and rodent infested.
For a multimillion-dollar industry that boasts about its valuable contribution to jobs and the economy the conditions were (and still are) disgraceful.
Contrary to the love stories we heard in parliament, I saw trainers pull up along the highway with their trailer, drag greyhounds out- restrained only by their collars-and then dump them and leave without a backward glance.
These were often dogs that had earned them heaps in prizemoney.
In all my two years there was not one trainer that ever called to see how their dogs were going, except for one trainer who called a few days later after dropping off his dog to ask, ‘is that thing dead yet?’.
I saw dogs arrive so emaciated and hungry that they immediately vomited their food back up.
People assume racing greyhounds must be well looked after because if they are starved or abused they surely won’t perform well? Sadly that’s not the case. Just fielding a dog, in any condition, can earn money.
The majority of dogs disliked, or were fearful of, men. When a man approached they would retreat to the back of their pens and show signs of stress and anxiety.
Some greyhounds had obviously only ever slept on a floor and had no idea how to even get onto a dog bed. They didn’t know what bedding or blankets were and would lay their bony bodies down on hard, freezing concrete because it was all they’d ever experienced.
A lot of them arrived with pressure sores, dull coats, dandruff and the majority had dental disease from poor diet and neglect. Often the dogs couldn’t eat kibble and had to be fed mush or wet food until they had their rotten teeth extracted by the vets.
I encountered a few dogs that arrived shaking uncontrollably – and were nervous, anxious and hypersensitive to sound.
There were dogs that had been chewing the wire of their cages in desperation. Under the new regime there was to be no mercy for these ‘unsuitable’ dogs. A few greyhounds came in and the next day, when picking up their faeces, it was noted that the majority of their faeces were filled with shavings. They were so hungry and malnourished they had resorted to eating their bedding. Some greyhounds arrived at GAP with conspicuous scars on their heads from permanent or prolonged muzzle wear that ate into their flesh. I also witnessed scars and marks on the faces and torsos of several greyhounds consistent with live baiting.
Most members of the public and parliamentarians simply have no idea. I am certain any normal person would be sickened to witness what I saw on a daily basis. When I first started working at GAP there was a lot of reward to be had from patiently rehabilitating greyhounds and restoring them to good health.
The big pay‑off was watching these dogs go off with families to start new lives as pets but mostly what I directly witnessed was a brutal and uncaring industry with far too few happy endings. It was not a love story, Mr Winter and Ms Howlett; it was a horror movie.
On and on these stories go. We had Four Corners investigate the greyhound racing industry and expose its abject cruelty. We then had the same journalist, Caro Meldrum‑Hanna, investigate the horse racing industry in Australia on The 7.30 Report. I do not know how many members saw either of those investigative reports but I encourage you to read the transcript rather than watching it because the story was so confronting. What we saw were these beautiful ex‑racing greyhounds terrified and being shoved into the blades. That is what was happening.
The fact about the horse racing industry in Australia and Tasmania is that we do not know what happens to ex‑racing horses. We have some window into the lives of ex‑racing greyhounds and there are some processes there like GAP, the Dogs Home, Brightside, and the RSPCA that are part of rehoming ex‑racing greyhounds. It is much easier to adopt a dog than it is a horse. In Tasmania, once a horse exits its profit‑making days in the racing industry, many of them just disappear. They disappear, because Tasracing has never, and nor has the industry nationally, established traceability for horses in the industry. We have marginal traceability for greyhounds. There are still dogs with huge question marks over what happened to them. Thank goodness for Animal Liberation Tasmania and the extraordinary work they do to investigate what is happening to these dogs and treat each individual dog as special and valuable.
But not in the horse racing industry. We just do not know. We have a fair idea what happens to ex‑racing horses: we feed them to our pets. If you have a look at what happens to disgraced trainer Ben Yole’s former horses, we have evidence that he takes them to Anthony Bullock’s place to get shot to feed the greyhounds.
We have this cycle of utter misery, and this legislation is not going to change that. At the foundation of this industry is a culture of breeding excess animals for profit; seeing these animals only as units of profit or cost. If you have a look at the breeding numbers for greyhounds and horses, many more are bred than are used by the industry.
What do we do in Tasmania? We pay to over‑breed. We have a breeders’ bonus in Tasmania. It is something that we spend – last time I looked I think it was about – we have an announcement here from the former minister for racing, Sarah Courtney, in July 2018, but the same bonus is in Tasracing’s annual report. I remember it being somewhere close to $600,000 a year allocated towards it. Imagine thinking it is a good idea for public money to go to people in the industry to over breed animals that are then invariably too often discarded. We get this puffed up media release, which makes it clear animal welfare comes last. It is a new breeding bonus which started in July 2018 and the quote is: [tbc 3.35]
The Hodgman Liberal Government recognises that breeding horses is an important primary industry and funding a breeding incentive program will allow it to grow further.
It is extraordinary that as a state we are prepared to accept this when we have people sleeping in tents up on the Domain, when we have an ambulance service which is manifestly underfunded, when our kids are still learning in buildings containing asbestos that were always meant to be temporary – they are still in them 30 years after they were whacked up. It is just the wrong priorities.
In terms of public support for this industry, I do not know how many members have seen the study to evaluate the attitudes of Tasmanians towards the greyhound racing industry in November last year. Only 3 per cent of Tasmanians surveyed in this EMRS poll said they were very likely or somewhat likely to attend a greyhound racing meet, with 90 per cent very unlikely to attend the meet or to place a bet. In terms of what extent do you support or oppose the greyhound racing industry in Tasmania, 11 per cent strongly or somewhat support, and 62 per cent strongly or somewhat oppose. You just see that there is the subsidy, the support for the subsidy.
The question was asked, how do Tasmanians feel about the funding that the government provides to the industry and 74 per cent, almost three quarters are opposed; 55 per cent strongly, and 15 per cent are in favour. That number is shrinking every day.
That is why this morning we tabled in this place a petition with 3603 signatures calling for parliament to establish a joint select committee to examine the racing deed which last year pumped $34 million into this industry and which expires in 2029. Regardless of your position on greyhound or horse racing, as responsible legislators we should be looking at this deed. We have an opportunity. It expires in five years’ time. By the time it expires, the subsidy will be close to $50 million a year and $50 million a year could build a lot of homes.
I refer members to the recommendations of the greyhound racing inquiry, most of which have been ignored by government.
I want to talk about the horses in the industry. I know members this morning had the opportunity to hear from Ellie Erdhardsen [tbc 3.38] from the Coalition for the Protection of Race Horses. She made the point that I made previously that we just do not know what is happening to these horses. She said to us, in the briefing, that it is beyond comprehension we would be supporting a bill that reduces transparency in this industry. She asks the question. For horses in particular, every single year there are more than 300 thoroughbred race horses leaving the industry in Tasmania, plus an unknown number of standard breds and no transparency into where these horses end up. At a bare minimum, the public needs to know how many horses are retired into genuine safe homes, how many are sold for slaughter, how many are euthanised – that means killed before their time; it is not a mercy killing when you have a healthy horse that could live a good life if they did not cost someone too much money to feed. How many horses are euthanised privately, out of the public eye and who authorises that these horses can be killed and for what reason?
A few years ago, across the estimates table, I had the opportunity to ask about a horse called Alone Again, a horse that just sort of got sick apparently and disappeared off the track. What do you know? Alone Again was taken up to Zoo Doo at Richmond and killed because he was not colicky, he had some gut issue. But that is just one example. He was a New Zealand-born racehorse. He never set the world on fire; twelve wins from 166 starts. But on May 19 of 2019, Alone Again ran his final race. We do not know what happened exactly, but we had a whistleblower information that his carcass had been fed to the lions at Zoo Doo. As a result of our questions across the table, we then had the Office of Racing Integrity investigate. Then we heard that the horse was exhumed from the Zoo Doo property, the poor hapless eleven-year-old Alone Again.
So again, Mr President, we can do so much better by these animals. So what are the standards we should be looking at in order to give these animals, give any animal, the respect that it deserves for a good life. I am glad I asked myself that because I will find it shortly.
Members would have heard this morning about the five domains of well-being for horses. They are quite straightforward. These were established in 2020 on the basis of rigorous research and experience. The five domains, the things that animals need to live a good life, which is all that any of us want, is it not?.
One, nutrition; two, a healthy physical environment; three, good health; four, behavioural interactions; and five, a healthy mental state. Now, they are not big asks, Mr President. In fact, all of us here who are pet owners—I do not even like using the word ‘owners’ when I talk about pets because they are members of our family—but all of us here who have pets treat them in line with the five domain model because we want our pets to be well-fed. We want them to feel loved. We want them to be warm at night. We want to be able to look after them if they get sick. We want them to experience happy and good things. These are the standards which should be in this legislation.
So when we talk about the Racing Integrity Commissioner setting standards, what are we talking about? Well, the standards are here, and if the racing industry, if Tasracing wants to redeem any part of its social licence, which the Greens obviously do not think it can, why would you not? First of all, accept that the industry needs to operate humanely and therefore accept an amendment that would require it to operate humanely, and then just apply the basics, the basics of giving animals a good life.
I will just say the Greens will never support the racing industries because we do not support the exploitation of animals for profit. We know what happens to too many of those animals. It is the ones that we do not see, that just disappear, which are deeply concerning. But you could have, in order to at least give a nod to community expectations, you could have Tasracing, Racing Integrity Commissioner adopt the five domains model for animal welfare. You could have the industry look at some of the best practices from overseas, in places like New Zealand, and I want to point out that Tasracing is a member of a national body where it is required to operate to a consistent best practice standard. But it has not been. I am not sure it ever can, because of the nature of the industry. I am not sure if members have followed the Ben Yole saga – and first of all, I want to acknowledge the extraordinary investigative work of ABC and the team that heard the testimony of whistleblowers and animal welfare advocates and investigated Ben Yole and his operations up at his Sidmouth property.
There are two primary concerns here that were dealt with in the Murrihy report. One was an allegation of cheating, of race fixing. The other was evidence of skinny, depressed looking horses in a dusty paddock eating their own manure. The Murrihy report upheld those allegations. The Murrihy review found evidence of race fixing and of animal neglect. Then what happened? In a number of interactions with Ben Yole, Tasracing clearly saw his operation as a threat to the industry’s reputation, and they tried to, pardon the pun, rein him. There was process, his appeal to the Supreme Court, which upheld Tasracing’s right to stop Ben Yole from cheating or neglecting animals. But Ben Yole is still racing.
Ben Yole is like another disgraced trainer, Anthony Bullock – the cycle of violence towards animals is too big to fail. That is the fact of these two trainers in the industry – a small industry. Ben Yole and Anthony Bullock are friends. Yole’s horses feed Bullock’s dogs. It is to big to fail. Both of those trainers still field most of the participants in race meets in harness racing and greyhound racing. That is why the industry is losing its social licence. That is why numbers attending race meets are falling. That is why increasingly people do not support the subsidies that go into this industry. It is because they see the evidence with their own eyes that this industry is irredeemably cruel. You cannot get around it.
I do not want to be a wowser. I know a lot of people enjoy attending a race meet. I listened with interest to the member for Pembroke’s contribution. Before I understood what happened to horses in the horse racing industry, I would buy a ticket in the sweeps for the Melbourne Cup, because I did not know. I did not understand the extent of the butchery. Let us be realistic here, they are quite often sent to the abattoir.
In Tasmania at the moment we only have a set of weak guidelines for horses, the Tasmanian Equine Welfare Guidelines of September 2008. They have not been updated since September 2008. One of the reforms in the bill here is the development of standards, that is a good thing, but they need to be strong standards, strong standards for integrity, really strong standards for animal welfare.
There needs to be a broader process of developing those standards so, that people with expertise and passion are able to feed in.
On the question of what is humane, what does the word ‘humane mean’? I sent around to members, colleagues this morning, the definition provided by UTAS lecturer Dr Megan Alessandrini(ok), who was at the briefing this morning and ‘humane’ from Law Insider, is defined as: [tbc 3.50]
… Providing care such as water, food, safe handling, clean facilities, medical treatment and euthanasia if needed. Conditions including an environment that is sensitive to species, specific biology and behaviour with the intent to minimise fear, pain, stress and suffering.
It is a pretty clear and straightforward definition of ‘humane’, but we all understand what the word means. It just means being kind and empathetic towards animals and respecting their intrinsic right to exist and to a good life. It is the least we should do because for centuries now, when you have a look at the history of law as it relates to animals, the law has treated animals as things, as objects for human use.
The evolution of animal welfare law has been far too slow. However, we are seeing in places, for example, like the Australian Capital Territory, where they have included a recognition of animal sentience in their Animal Welfare Act. We can do that here. In fact, it was the government’s own Animal Welfare Advisory Committee back in 2009, that had representatives from the TFGA and RSPCA, that recommended the Animal Welfare Act be amended to include a recognition that animals experience mental suffering.
We tried to do that in the House of Assembly a number of times. We raised it, we tried to get an amendment in, from memory. Without reflecting too much on a debate in the other place, I remember the arguments for not including a recognition of mental suffering in the Animal Welfare Act being specious at best, pardon the pun, hollow arguments.
I guess that is the concern in a way. If parliament decides by vote that it does not want to require Tasracing to operate efficiently, effectively and humanely, parliament recognises that the industry cannot operate humanely and is that where the resistance is coming from?
Is the reluctance to include mental suffering, recognition of it in the Animal Welfare Act, coming from a place that, ‘Well, if we do that, we are going to have to treat these creatures differently.’ It is. That is where it is coming from.
We have got a long way to go. We are not the only important living thing on Earth; we are just one part of a web of life.
While the Greens and I do not support this industry, we do not support this legislation, it is our position that the integrity function should be a million miles away from the commercial function. We still take our jobs, obviously, as legislators seriously and we will be working to strengthen this bill where we can and hope that, at least for some of the amendments, there is support from colleagues, because if this is a legacy bill, as we are being told, let us make it the best it can be. If it is parliament’s choice to support the racing industry through subsidy and this legislation, well, let us put some more respect for animals into the heart of this bill. Let us require Tasracing to operate humanely.
Let us have standards for animal welfare and integrity that are best practice standards – not just any old standards but the best that there can be. I think we can do that if we are going to establish a new structure that actually reverses a decision made by a previous parliament to separate those functions of commercial and integrity arms. If we are going to do that, let us get it right,. Let us get it right, because, while our constituents can come and lobby us and raise issues with us and if they want something changed, work with us to achieve that. None of these animals can do that.
We’re dealing here with sentient, voiceless, too-often-exploited living creatures, which the law in Tasmania and nationally has not yet recognised as sentient creatures with an intrinsic right to exist. We can make a bit of a start here in the racing bill. It should just be the Racing Regulation Bill, but that’s okay, we can make a bit of a start there now.
In closing, we have heard any number of times from the minister, we heard it from the member for Pembroke. It keeps being said that this industry is worth many hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Tasmania. No, it is not. The consultant that is used for the industry nationally and in Tasmania is IER Consultants. They are invariably engaged by racing bodies in the horse and dog racing industry in Australia and New Zealand because they provide a very handy overstated reference point for politicians and the like to talk about the value or otherwise of this industry.
And these IER reports are used to justify the use of taxpayer money to fund animal racing. Then these reports present this data as fact. But IER reports use unaudited data, bad economic methodology and inflated job numbers to exaggerate the benefits of the racing industry. The approach used by IER is considered unreliable and misleading by economists, the Tasmanian Department of Treasury and Finance and the Australian Productivity Commission. A 2023 Tasmanian IER report was produced to ‘meet the requirements’ of Tasracing. The report cannot be considered objective or unbiased. It is designed to portray the industry in the most positive light possible.
Taxpayers deserve better. But, according to the Tasracing IER report, there are 993 full-time equivalent jobs in the racing industry in Tasmania. According to the Census and Australian Bureau of Statistics data there is actually 160 full time jobs in the racing industries in Tasmania, which is an exaggeration of about six-fold. The ABS also rejects the IER approach to counting indirect jobs. There is an input-output multiplier to calculate indirect jobs, so, the person at the service station or the shop who serves the trainer or the steward or the jockey, their lunch is counted into the jobs in the industry. But the ABS rejects this approach, saying it has inherent shortcomings that make it ‘inappropriate for economic impact analysis’.
Over the life of a 20-year funding agreement under this deed, Tasracing will receive at least half a billion taxpayer dollars. So, it is time that we had a look at the deed, that we had a look at the level of funding that this industry receives. That is a task for another day and the Greens will be back in here, I will be back in here to give us that opportunity but we will not be supporting this legislation and do not support these industries.
We are here for the voiceless and we always will be. I am not saying that we love animals more than anyone else in this place before anyone gets offended by something I have said. I am not saying that. I am saying that we will get in here and defend animals every day of the week, as we have as Greens for decades.
It is part of a core of who we are because in a just society. We look after people. We look after animals. We look after the planet. We have to do a much better job of that as well. I will be back with amendments. I thank honourable members for their patience, but also for attending this morning’s briefing with animal welfare stakeholders.
It was really appreciated by those great women who came along this morning to talk to members about some of the animal welfare issues in the industry. They were really thrilled to have been given the opportunity to address MLCs directly. I thank my colleagues for coming along in such numbers to the briefing.
