I remember they also appointed KordaMentha back in 2016 to look into allegations of mass graves. Not sure how much that cost and whether it is ongoing.

Begs the question where else are the throwing money away and are the competent in running the industry in a fit and proper manner

Aren't we lucky, they are here to SAVE the industry...

Examples would be how Corporations go to great lengths and costs to protect their intellectual property from being coped, replicated and stolen

Governments across the world are still spending billions on security and intelligence measures to try to protect their citizens against terrorists

Who ends up paying for all these costs? taxpayers and consumers.

GRNSW, in previous administrations, had dropped the ball badly in expenditure and practice regarding these issues allowing the practices that we were being actually hung for

Jim Meletios put up a clip of Chips Rafferty talking about Black Top and in that old film from the 1960's clearly states that live baiting was illegal and that greyhounds made great pets

What has happened in the last 55 years then? SFA

Therefore, because things have been let go for so many years, we have this over reaction of millions of dollars being directed to welfare and integrity measures that should have been spent on systems and practices over the last 55 years

Who's paying for it now? We are.

I am not defending what has been spent or how its been spent, I am not really happy about it but that's the position we, as an industry, are in right now

We either get behind it and support it or get out, because there won't be an industry if we don't

Except for your last sentence, there is good sound material there.

In fact, I suggest the key issue is that there is no accountability and therefore no discipline in the way authorities are run. The standard bureaucratic solution to any problem is to add more people and more regulations, generally without auditing what went wrong in the first place.

That has happened in all three live baiting states, with the small exception of WDA being assigned to look into the "why".

It also happened with alleged "overbreeding" - something which I rubbished from the day after it was first mentioned a few years ago. Yet administrators and politicians dined out on it for a long while after.

Racing authorities are responsible to the Minister and, through him, to the citizens of the state. That is pretty much a joke. Even the auditors do no more than check the arithmetic in the annual report, ignoring whether costs and expenses were well justified in the first place.

This is the underlying reason why bureaucracies are seldom held to account but private companies are (even banks!). The solution is to either create a company to operate greyhound racing, or to set up a structure which mimics a company's duties and responsibilities.

You can't do this by tacking on bits and pieces to an existing structure, or even by splitting up the tasks into two or more organisations, as is the practice now. The bureaucratic momentum would continue unabated. You have to go back to scratch and start again. The system is actually broken and should be replaced.

The challenge, therefore, is not to "support it or get out" but to dismantle what's there and replace it with a structure which can thrive in the 21st century.

For financial reasons alone, it is impossible to see how "support" will sustain the industry as we know it. If you have a cancer it has to be cut out. Radical reform is the only real answer.

To which I have to add an additional challenge. The attitude and the culture of participants is also suspect - otherwise why would the 95% not have dobbed in the 5% (insert your own numbers here) who grossly abused the system and shamed the industry by indulging in the disgraceful live baiting in the first place? They all knew - or most would have - but did nothing.

It is impossible to accept that substantial illegal trialling operations took place, all involving top trainers, without it being general knowledge. Indeed, as I have mentioned elsewhere, many people have still not got the message when they keep complaining about the need to use skins to enhance chasing habits.

That reform is therefore a two-pronged exercise.

We either change course or watch the torpedo hit the ship.

Why do you have exception to it?

Its reality Bruce

I talk plainly Bruce, not in riddles

How would you know what was happening from 55 years ago ? Perhaps, the last 30. If so, what went on ?

Your general blanket of information doesn't keep everyone warm at night. Just because you're now peddling propaganda for GWIC and/or GRNSW doesn't mean we have to accept it.

Perhaps you should get a mirror and look at yourself before you start accusing others of peddling propaganda

The GWIC has no call on that issue.it deals with welfare and integrity

Tracks are a matter for the commercial board of GRNSW

You are just ranting for nothing now
You have no idea.you are only good at making personal attacks.

You should read again what you have just written and stuff before.

When you dont like what I have written, you come out believe its a personal attack, yet you do the same. I try and attack your comments, so in a way it is personal, but you shouldnt be taking the high moral ground here, but thats how you play, by navigating around the real questions and answers and claiming its personal.

Please don't go down roads followed by others here. I made half a dozen or so specific points, none of which were riddles.

We differ in that you favour "support" for the current system and I don't. Yet at the same time you point out (correctly) that such a system has produced nothing much for 55 years. Absolutely.

The current system has demonstrated it is incapable of producing progress, or perhaps even survival, either physically or intellectually. So we have to accept the word of Einstein or whoever that if something is not working, change it. Failure to change will just produce the same old result.

My experience goes a little beyond your 55 years and in all that time I can identify only two changes of significance. One is drug controls and even that is subject to debate at the fringes. The other is wagering where both governments and authorities have lost the plot (details are on another thread). Income is stuffed and the product is unsaleable to anyone but mug gamblers in pubs.

Your "reality" may be that nothing can be done but I reject that. To make the point, is there another industry which still operates much as it did 55 years ago? How old is the FJ Holden? When did TV arrive? Decimal currency? SKY? TABs? Supermarkets? Iphones? Cheap flights? Casinos? Electric trains to Gosford and Dapto. Trainers taking dogs interstate at the drop of a hat?

Change is essential. Big time.

No Mark

What I am is angry. Angry at how people like yourself try to divide the sport instead of uniting it.

You can call it whatever you like, but you troll me on here like a dirty mole sniping at the role of the two bodies

You show yourself up because you have no idea what each body's responsibilities are and thus you are asking the wrong questions to the wrong people.

You are throwing questions like a bad darts player, you haven't hit a score yet

PS As far as track closures are concerned, personally, I think we have too many tracks and many of those are of the wrong shape and configuration

However, my role on the Animal Welfare Committee will have no bearing at all on whether tracks will close or not

As I have mentioned that will be a matter for the GRNSW Board once they know how much money they have to work with, which has nothing to do with the role of the GWIC

Bruce

All I am saying is that nothing was acted upon since Chips Rafferty made that video on Black Top and mentioned those two issues which are still of great relevance in today's world

I don't have an answer for anybody, all I am saying is that the subsequent administrations ignored these issues and we are paying for it today

Going forward, we can only hope that future administrations don't neglect their duties like past ones have

Nick

It's been a government bureaucracy since the days of the GRCB, the GRHHA and then GRNSW

None of them in the past served the industry well

The GBOTA who were traditionally the advocates for the participants in the industry suddenly became big time track operators and to a large extent became derelict in their duty to the members they were supposed to represent

The NCA was decimated and fell by the wayside, Dapto is run by Trotting advocates, we had an ICAC inquiry that uncovered corrupt practices.

So tell me who was controlling the sport in these times? It has been in damage control for a long time.

I am amazed it has survived this far.

The sport/industry needs to get its house in order now, very quickly, to sell itself to the public and the community and the governments that now hold the keys to the engine

Its universally recognised that administration neglected key areas of animal welfare & policing the sport, partly from under funding & partly protecting (in my opinion).

The question has to be asked to politicians who now have made the rules...why are the participants paying the price for the f$&k ups from THEIR appointments?? And when I say THEIR appointments I mean past Boards & CEOs, senior managers who did nothing to rectify the problems within the industry. The racing minister in NSW, since GRNSW became an independent organisation, was the one who appointed the board & CEO.

So why blame the majority of participants by placing sometimes ridiculous rules & paperwork on them?? Its just gone way too far.