I 100% agree Kev!

HAHAH yeah say Casino and NSW Gov. will get approved in a week. That sucks about the councils in Beaudesert & Jimboomba. Maybe Sunshine Coast area? Spend the money at Bundaberg, upgrade to a state of the art facility there? I've never been, but hows Moree, spend the money there, they don't need to be on the coast line.

Bill,Increasing home density will always discriminate against keeping animals, especially for commercial purposes.

However, the real problem is that much of the community does not like greyhounds or greyhound racing. In turn, that attitude has evolved for two reasons: (1) greyhound racing's chequered history - eg live hare coursing, live baiting, etc and (2) the general failure of racing authorities (and perhaps clubs) to mount serious campaigns to better influence that public.

Stuff like community days, GAP and displays at shows are great but they are not enough by a long way. This is why we got 2 1/2 pages of anti-greyhound rant in the Sun Herald recently - most of it exaggerated or wrong. But once thrown, the mud sticks!

The solution is to mount serious campaigns demonstrating the history and wonders of the greyhound breed together with the families (always families) that keep it going, as well as regular information on what is happening. It's called public relations but it gains very little attention from some states and none from others. And preaching to the converted does not count.

What newspaper don't know they can't print.

As for Border Park, GRNSW has had years to come up with answers but it did no more than mount a stupid effort to effectively shift it into Queensland - a legal impossibility on several grounds. In fact is also actually reduced its racing frequency for very little reason at a time when the GC had just closed down.

We need management, not administration.

Some `big noting' MP down near Queanbeyan (Eden / Monaro) wants to build a track inside the t'bred track in his electorate to replace the Canberra one, if they don't survive. His Seat is not safe; it's a marginal seat.

Bruce,
I disagree. Everyone I know loves greyhounds and racing and they don't know I'm part of the industry. There is probably a small percentage who despise us and the rest don't really care or don't have an opinion because its unfamiliar to them.

The bloke putting up Queanbeyan specifically was Barilaro, deputy NSW Premier and leader of the Nationals. However, the Canberra club already had it as a Plan B (location uncertain) if they could not overturn the ACT law. Much water yet to flow under the bridge, including what compensation they can screw out of the ACT government.

Eden/Monaro is the federal seat - the state one might be different and there are different factors in play.

Loving greyhounds - I hope you are right but all the vibes suggest the opposite. Live baiting had a long and sustained impact, especially as it followed on from a history of live hare racing, much drugging, exports to Macau and a cheapish, workers only image (eg in the coalfields). Live baiting caused no change to betting (mugs in pubs) but appears to have helped decimate breeding (serious investors). Worth thinking about.

Baird was hasty but he also knew he had quite a few supporters, including the Greens, the RSPCA and the past and present Racing Ministers. In any event, whether the public is negative or neutral the industry still has to move attitudes to positive, which is not the case now. Nobody is bothering, never has.

Curiously, the much-criticised Paul Newson (including by me) was the only guy in decades who recognised that problem and sought to do something about it. But when WDA identified some of the cultural issues the industry furiously dumped on it. Can't win, can you?

I think you are referring to the time when newson was abducted by the mother ship and implanted with a green slimey two-headed alien.
The problem was then that the tentacles of the green slimey two-headed alien sought to mate, and bugger me, found it lurking in the bowels of the WDA.

And so was born a hybrid of a thing that not only needed to be dumped on, it needed to be flushed.

Only way for transparency and genuine improvement is to be, well...HONEST.

Bloody aliens, hey Bruce...can't trust 'em.

You quoted something I said but then did not respond to the point I made, other than to indirectly criticise the WDA (as have many others).

But that's all people did - criticise it when it said things they did not like. Yet the fundamental reason for engaging WDA in the first place, and the major factor in its report, was that industry culture in respect to live baiting and the like had to be changed.

Considering that the current horrible state of the industry as well as its future cost levels are a direct result of live baiting that criticism is not only unjustified, it is suicidal.

Incidentally, it was ironic to read of an observer (a trainer) of the Tooradin trial track saga in Victoria who noted that all the "baiting dogs" did no good at their next start. A sniff and a chomp did not work. WDA said much the same thing in a different way - ie that there were other (legal) ways of handling any shortcoming in keenness, including better early education. That thought got rubbished by several trainers, too, mostly on the grounds that the WDA people "had not put a lead on a greyhound and stood behind the boxes" etc.

Tradition is a huge factor in greyhound training methods. Fathers, mates and peers play a big part. That's fair enough to start with but does that mean there is nothing new to learn? Are we wedded to the 1950s? (Hint - vets, feeds, medicines, rugs, timing gear, air conditioning, aeroplanes and the transport used to get to the track are all 21st century stuff, but all are products of people outside the immediate industry, not those inside it). Even an amateur like Newson saw the difference.

That's Part A.

Part B is that industry structures and management are also floundering in the 1950s.

Those two together are why we are stuck with a failed politician to run the industry. Honest!

And the industry did not "flush" Newson. He quit in disgust (well partly, anyway).