Go to gwic.nsw.gov.au. Go to "Reports and Statistics" Go to "Breeding" for numbers of greyhounds bred. Go to "Retirement and End of Life Report" for what happens to the greyhounds when they are finished racing. Can't be more definitively wrong about something than this turkey.

It's not that hard, and if he can't get it right he should do us all a favour and get a job delivering pizzas or something, journalism just isn't for him. Bet the rest of the article is a doozy.

P.S. The layout of the breeding stats by GWIC with the accompanying graphs are actually very good.

100% Nathan

Actually GWIC goes to great lengths to keep these statistics

And comments such as this make no sense at all:

If racing people knew how engaging these dogs can be, Im sure theyd get out of the industry.

Umm, we are in the industry because we already know how engaging they are

From all its inaccurate information being spewed out and definite anti-racing sentiment it is a very unbalanced article written by Frank Robson

Hopefully GWIC will roll out a refutation of that article in terms of its misinformation

The person rehoming the greyhounds...we need a lot more of them in our sport, but those who understand the road we are travelling with our dogs in the modern racing world and not dwelling on the past looking to wind up the sport

Here is a more positive Story worthy of a read and share
EXTERNAL LINK

I disagree with your use of the word garbage. I see the article as a good one for the industry, even though it employs lousy figures. On balance, 80% or more is good stuff, 20% is not of much help. But whose fault is that?

Having studied the article carefully, I found that ..

Robson is an experienced journalist and author and made real attempts to track down the facts and opinions unlike many in the profession, including a previous writer at SMH.
To the extent that he uses figures, they all originate in the dumb confidential memo written by a previous CEO at GA and passed on to the Special Commission by Paul Newson, then the temporary CEO of GRNSW.
Even then, that data was not all wrong but it was presented badly and failed to emphasise sufficiently that many missing dogs were not euthanised but simply had escaped from a sub-standard record keeping system.
While that shortcoming is now being addressed by lifetime record keeping rules, there has been no attempt by GA or anyone else to officially correct and publicise historical data (eg estimating natural deaths, injuries, snakebites, spider bites, on the owners couch, etc, etc).
Consequently, neither Robson or anyone else has any choice but to do their best to access any data that is available. Logically, if the Special Commission and the Judge says so it must be right, eh? The fact that you or I rebutted the output does not count in the big world.

The challenge is threefold:

(1) GAs effort on this and other subjects has been pathetic and amateurish over several years. It has never been held to account for its errors, omissions and failures of which this is one. That must change. (The current CEO has only just arrived there and has no racing or greyhound experience).
(2) I agree that GWIC is doing a nice job of presenting NSW figures but every state is different and national data is rarely, if ever, available. GA has published no data of any sort since 2016. There must be a national clearing house for this data and lots of other stuff as well (as occurs with the thoroughbreds).
(3) Whether for data or any other reason the industry must routinely present a fact and info sheet so that journalists and others have an authoritative source to access for their queries. It must cover both historical and current material, including the story of the canine athlete over the millennia.

My 80% good figure? The article, including the headline, was heavily directed to the re-homing subject and offered positive several examples. Thats good.

PS: One gap in the article (from the industry viewpoint) is that no comparative information is offered on other animal or dog breeds or on euthanasia stats ex RSPCA and Council compounds. These are huge.

Robson has been fed the numbers by such organizations as Coalition for Protection of Greyhounds and their related networks

The tone and substance of his article was there to hurt the industry by garnering further support from the readers of the SMH to shock them into protesting to the Government

Are really that gullible Bruce?

Hopefully our industry leaders aren''t either

For years you so called Experienced Journalist have distorted the FACTS and FIGURES and the Truth
You hold no credibility with your peers Tornado in the Greyhound Industry anymore we are sick of the FAKE NEWS you have all been spewing for years ..
Thank God it is now 2020 and we can make up our own minds and your mind Tornado is distorted between FACT AND FICTION ....

RE "Robson has been fed the numbers by such organizations as Coalition for Protection of Greyhounds and their related networks".

There is no such evidence. In fact, Robson specifically quoted his sources - ie GA which says it is "still in the process of scoping a consistent national data framework" and the Special Commission.

Other outsiders have done the same thing and indeed have no choice as better figures have never been produced.

Similarly, the claim that GWIC has euthanasia figures is suspect. Maybe they do but I can't find it. There is plenty about race fatalities but not about post-racing. Additionally, GWIC lists all sorts of disposal figures and reasons (of data "reported to it") but euthanasia is not there - assumed to be zero?

There is no reason to alter my previous summary. Mostly useful but with worries.

And nothing alters the need for authorities to do a better PR job.

I think that, in terms of animal welfare, greyhound racing has been successful way way beyond any reasonable expectation. A real credit to many people. But I don't think anyone had really thought through the consequences of being so successful. One consequence is that as the GAP programs expand, they outcompete many of the small adoption groups.

The reaction of those groups will be to bag greyhound racing not just because they don't like it, but to pressure Government to fund them instead of GAP and keep them afloat. There is a different purpose to the misinformation now and the strategy needs to acknowledge this. The problem is that we all agree that more greyhound adoptions are a good thing, so it's really hard to get the right strategy.

I'm not sure what the answer is, mind you it's a much nicer problem than the one's facing greyhound racing three years ago.

These adoption groups need to be brought into the fold and funded. They need to be contracted and brought under control.

Whilst they are out there getting no funding and our participants giving them broken dogs to rehome then they will always be whining and also working to bring the sport down.

Don;t give them those reason.

Once they start getting paid to re-home greyhounds they are also then benefiting from the so-called 'blood money'they talk about

It becomes a 'mute'argument'

The positiveness created needs to be reinforced and the general public made to see the efforts and the mechanics behind how the sport is being transformed Australia wide

We can't afford to be complacent in these areas

I'll buy that last bit - with the addition that it's not just NSW that needs to crank into action but all Australian authorities. The need and the answer is a nation wide deal.

Note - I had hoped that the first Million Dollar race series would lead to more productive flow-ons but I am not sure that has happened.

Still, the fact that Robson (an arms length commentator, not a SMH reporter) has found a significant area on which to talk is itself a guide to potentially wider interest. On that, I would hope that the various CEOs would be hot on his trail to supply him with good potential material.

A "Day in the Life" of a greyhound might be one such topic.

It seems that beauty is in the eye of the beholder or something like that.

In short, people are reading into the article what they see through rose-tinted glasses. All of us, you and me as well.

OK, thats fair enough as far as it goes. But it does not necessarily make any one view good or correct, any more so than another. However, it is also important to stand back and consider the intent of the article, the motives of the writer and the actual subject he is addressing.

Now, you or I might make the odd change here and there or we might change the emphasis at times. We certainly would address some of the data used or not used. Even so, there is consistent evidence that Robson made substantial efforts to get at the truth, that he was not coming from a biased angle (as previous SMH reporters have done), and that he presented both local and worldwide evidence (some needing correction).

More importantly, his sole aim was to write about re-homing as a topical subject. Nothing more, nothing less. The headline and the sub-headline said exactly that. So did the body of the article with examples. Personally, I cant think of a matter that is more critical to the future of greyhound racing, so the more the merrier.

Objections to Robsons reading of the subject are wasted here. He is not writing for the benefit of greyhound participants but to evoke public interest in the subject and the editor clearly agreed.

By all means write a letter to the SMH editor but let me offer some advice: using abusive and biased language will send your letter straight to the bin. Much better to mount an argument and supply good facts.

Maybe Robson would like to have a open debate about this on this Forum considering we have 3 times the amount of views his article has so far .

"Bullshit, lies, innuendo, untruths", we are told.

Where exactly? Details, please.

This thread has a bit more than 1,000 viewers, no doubt nearly all from the ranks of participants.

Robson's piece was in a premium part of a leading newspaper and was put in front of literally hundreds of thousands of readers, the vast majority non-participants.

Which do you think would have the bigger influence?