How NSW went overboard with the greyhound ban

TO fathom Mike Baird’s decision to close down the greyhound racing industry, you have to understand the integral role of extremist animal activists, whose ­express aim is to ban horse racing.

Has justice gone barking mad?

• Judge backtracks on greyhound report
• Banning greyhound racing will hurt us all
• Greyhound racing ban: Industry forms crack legal team

To fathom Mike Baird’s autocratic decision to close down the greyhound racing industry, you have to understand the integral role of extremist animal activists, whose ­express aim is to ban horse racing, zoos, farming, fishing and the eating of meat.

You also need to understand that the explosive ABC Four Corners program about live baiting aired just six weeks before last year’s NSW election, saw the first Animal Justice Party MP elected to parliament, Mark Pearson, who is also executive director of NSW Animal Liberation.

All hell broke loose last year after Four Corners aired horrendous video covertly recorded by Animals Australia activists, showing live rabbits, possums and piglets being killed by greyhounds in Queensland, Victoria and NSW.

But, while the other states immediately ordered appropriate animal welfare reforms, including teams of investigators, inspections and breeding quotas, NSW went over the top.

In the heat of a close election campaign, Racing Minister Troy Grant ordered a 13-month special commission of inquiry with the powers of a royal commission, headed by one of the most left-wing judges ever to sit on the High Court.

Michael McHugh, 80, was part of the activist Mason High Court famous for its Mabo decision on native title. His wife Jeanette McHugh was a left-wing federal Labor MP for 16 years, campaigning on anti-­nuclear, environment, peace and women’s ­issues.

He is an advocate for an Australian Bill of Rights, and once told Sydney University students: “My own social views are probably as radical as anyone in this room — maybe more so …

“Developed nations need ­agitators … interfering meddling people that question the rules and practices that most of the community accepts.”

McHugh’s report is the holy writ the Premier used to justify destroying the greyhound industry.

Recommendations

The 750-page report made 80 recommendations, but only the first is prominently displayed: for parliament to “consider whether the industry has lost its social licence and should no longer be permitted to operate in NSW”.

Baird didn’t even bother to ask Parliament. The other 79 recommendations would tie the industry up in red tape but could have been adapted to preserve the industry.

McHugh’s report’s focuses, not on live-baiting, a crime of a minority of trainers, but on “wastage”. His dramatic opening paragraph claims that between 50 and 70 per cent of greyhounds born in the past 12 years have been killed “because they were considered too slow to pay their way or were unsuitable for racing”.

Most industry people are mystified by the statistics and the report does not provide direct evidence.

Its methodology relies on dubious assumptions, claiming 80,721 missing greyhounds, of which “somewhere ­between 48,891 and 68,448 dogs were killed”.

McHugh arrives at this figure by ­extrapolating from the number of litters registered with Greyhounds Australasia, multiplied by an average of 6.3 pups per litter, to come up with 97,783 pups “whelped” or born, and then ­applies a magic 50-70 per cent to arrive at his dead dog number.

The number of pups born is disputed by trainers such as Rob Ingram, from Tomingley, near Dubbo.

Even in large litters, he says, “things go wrong”. He had one unfortunate litter of eight pups, of which four died of parvovirus at four months, one contracted tetanus, one died in a training accident, one broke her wrist and was adopted out, and the ­remaining greyhound “just doesn’t want to race”.

Ominously, McHugh’s conclusions accord almost entirely with the views of several animals rights activists cited in the report. Animals Australia is named 19 times and “suggested that it was likely that in NSW between 5000 and  6800  greyhounds were killed each year” , which accords with McHugh’s death tally, even though he admits “it is not clear how this figure was calculated”.

Controversy

AA, which also was responsible for temporarily closing the live cattle trade, was co-founded by controversial philosopher Peter Singer, who campaigns for animal “equality” with ­humans. Animal Liberation ACT, also based on Singer’s philosophies, was also quoted authoritatively in the ­report, warning of the negative impacts of gambling.

Among the most prominent of 43 witnesses was Dr Karen Dawson, the Greyhound Equality Society’s veterinary adviser and a member of Sentient, The Veterinary Institute for Animal Ethics. She made six submissions to the inquiry, including 11 videos. Sentient opposes greyhound racing, horse racing, wild horse culling, live animal export, and routine practices in dairy, beef, sheep and chicken farming.

Sharing these views is Dr Eleonora Gullone of the Animal Justice Party, who also was quoted in the report. She is the campaign manager for the “Greyhound Racing Shut It Down” campaign, and describes animals as “non-human citizens”.

The Animal Justice Party “advocates a plant based diet free of all products derived from animals” and fish. Its policies include bans on: horse jump racing, greyhound racing, recreational hunting, game fishing, rodeos, horse-drawn carriage rides, zoos and marine parks used for human entertainment, live export of animals, “factory farming”, advertising of animal products, killing of bats, “tail docking, castration, branding, ear marking, teeth clipping, de-horning and mulesing”.

It wants “a new legal status for animals”, including fish which “feel joy, suffering and pain just as land animals do” and should be included in all animal welfare legislation”.

Empowered by a royal commission and a weak Premier, animal justice warriors are just getting started.

Right to drift to the right

BRILLIANT research by Peter Kurti of the Centre for Independent Studies says identity politics has spawned a new ideological fanaticism which threatens democracy.

Kurti says the demands of minority groups over those of the majority is creating a “democratic deficit” which has led to the rise of Hansonism and extremist groups.

“Minority fundamentalism … has all the features of religious fundamentalism, such as ideological fanaticism; intolerance of dissent; and a total certainty about truth and falsehood.” The weapons used by the “new fundamentalists” are “hatred and vituperation, and they deploy them to wage war on ‘intolerance’,” Kurti writes.

The tyranny of ‘‘identity politics’’ is “characterised by heavy use of stigma and shame, and enthusiastically pursued by the Progressive Left”. He cites campaigns such as the Safe Schools ­Coalition, which demand that, “social structures, such as gender, must be dismantled in the name of equality”.

And he warns that democratic freedoms we take for granted such as free speech and freedom of religion are being eroded by identity politics , whose pursuit of “equality” fosters tyranny.

Not really doing themselves proud

What is with the unseemly self-love of the latest crop of professional athletes?

No sooner do they win some award or other than they are telling us how proud they are ... of themselves.

Wimbledon champion Andy Murray declared this week: “There was a lot of pressure on me to perform well here and I’m very proud with how I’ve handled that.”

Well bully for him. He then gracelessly refused the traditional champions dance with Serena Williams, joking he hadn’t had enough to drink.

US Women’s Open Golf winner Brittany Lang echoed Murray’s self-praise in her speech, after beating Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist in controversial circumstances.

“I’m really proud of myself,” said Lang.

Whatever happened to humility?