I particularly liked paragraph 171.

Me too

171. A right THINKING person would not condemn the appellant for his conduct.

However, it helps to point out that active participants should never be appointed to board positions. The risks of conflicts of interest are too great, whether deliberate or not. It is not fair to either party.

Don't agree !!!!!
I would rather have an active Participant before a Government appointed Anti any Day !!!

You might note that Eberrand was probably the best qualified person to ever occupy a board spot - yet still ran into strife (for no fault of his own). He has both professional and training credentials.

Many previous examples of participant membership have also proved problematical - witness the years when GBOTA and NCA threw rocks at each other (some of which I personally witnessed). Or PAW quitting in disgust, as did the NCA President.

By the way, I suggest you have no evidence that the government has appointed "antis" (although it did to the Reform Panel). If that was true the solution is to sack the Minister.

For good governance, justice must be seen to be done.

Paul Newson is or isnt anti greyhounds?? & he was appointed by then Racing Minister Troy Grant to be interim CEO....he in turn appointed Madeline Love.

I could go on with previous board appointees etc but I dont need to be sued.

Thankfully all of the above have been given the short shift

As I said, "... the solution is to sack the Minister".

That's what happened.

Yes, Newson was a mixed bag, but he was a temporary "fix" as a seconded public servant. In practice, he did much more than some of his "expert" predecessors.

He accurately pinpointed the industry's woes and then commissioned WDA and UTS to assist in defining the problems. He also went to the trouble of covering the state to talk with participants (I attended one such meeting). Those were rare occurrences in an introverted industry where outsiders are routinely rubbished.

No Bruce

He may have pinpointed the problems with the industry but he was weak and did not believe that the industry could correct itself

His motives were found out when The Australian got a hold of the letters and emails he sent to the NSW Government that promoted the shutting down of the industry

EXTERNAL LINK

There was a lot going on behind the scenes that a show like 60 minutes could really get their teeth into

Newson would always have been conscious of the fact that he would be returning to the public service and would therefore be keen to ensure his card was marked satisfactorily. Apparently, it was and so he got brownie points when he went back.

On the other hand, he had fiduciary obligations to greyhound racing which should have outweighed his duty to government.

It is arguable what was meant by all the to and fro with memos etc.
For example, employing WDA did highlight the risks tied up with a live baiting platform and Baird/Grant could well take advantage of that (and did, albeit with errors). However, such measures were long overdue. Baird/Grant were technically right but in their rage they overstepped the mark.

But using UTS went to the other end - ie for the future good of the industry.

On balance, what he left behind was an improvement on what his several predecessors achieved (which was negative). If his memos were intended to shut down the industry then they failed, didn't they?

Frankly, I was and still am much more concerned with what the Reform Panel got away with. That really cooked the books.

Heand Baird/Grant failed because they were caught trying to legislate and shame the sport out of existence plus the ones that have since left GRNSW that tried

They caused a lot of problems

Resolving a matter like this is hard when all the commentary is full of hearsay, innuendo, half truths, assumptions and wishful thinking.

To a large extent, that was true of the article in The Australian, written mainly by a well-respected and experienced Brisbane-based reporter, Hedley Thomas. It contained few facts. The second paragraph waffling on about staff loss of confidence and the unsourced quote about apparent collusion emphasise that point.

Had there been any meat in the argument you can bet that Thomas would have gone in boots and all.

Simply, Newson was doing his job. The fact is that Newson (or any Board) was directly responsible to government for a range of things to do with greyhound racing. Thats the job. He was bound to communicate with government, and vice versa. You or I might have done it differently but that is not relevant. It is nave to pretend otherwise.

The more important conclusion to draw is that governments do a poor job of running commercial enterprises. In the case of Baird or Baird plus Grant it appears plain that they exceeded their ethical authority in making the initial shutdown decision without the benefit of Cabinet or Parliamentary discussion. The Auditor General was also critical about advertising errors.

Properly like virtually all other comparable organisations governments would do best to stay out of commercial operations and let greyhound racing charge ahead on its own, subject only to the laws of the land.

There is a positive way of running things AND then there is the negative way of running things

I definitely put Newson in the latter

It is both common and expected for listed companies to have boards with industry experience, & for directors to have a stake in the company (many being remunerated with shares). Governance is achieved via a strong Conflict of Interest policy, and rules such as insider trading & director trading windows.

This provides a better business outcome than having no industry experience. Myers woes through lack of retail experience on its board are testament to this, & parallel greyhound racing.

In Victoria, there is an additional consideration; the absence of professional finance representation on the board, which unsurprisingly coincides with a declining financial performance.

In contrast, thoroughbred racing does not preclude participants from board appointments and applies a Conflict of Interest policy. There are nowhere near the participant issues in that code as there are in greyhound racing. To me, the reason is obvious, the 'operator', clubs & participants work together in a more inclusive manner.

And I can't see the sense in different governance rules applying across the Racing codes.

Looking at the broad picture, there is strong evidence that all racing codes have done poorly over recent decades. Foal/pup numbers are declining, bettings market share continues to give way to other options (down from 50% to 10%), all three codes jump from one setback to another (cobalt, jumps, etc) and wowsers are getting noisier and more successful by the day (Canberra dogs).

The common denominator is that all three codes are nominally run by committees of management appointed by the government. That promotes mediocrity. Still, in practice, a single person tends to control the show, as can be seen with RNSW, which introduces its own limitations, while national bodies are largely ineffectual (we have just had a quarterly meeting of GA but does anyone know what they talked about?).

In that climate, I have raised objections to active participants being on the board. (Previous participants are a different kettle of fish). My prime reason is that virtually all board discussions would involve a conflict of interest. Or, as in the case of the sacked NSW board, a reluctance to take firm action (live baiting etc) and that was a board where nearly all members had some past industry involvement, albeit none currently.

Prior to that, boards were full of insiders, all of which presided over the decline of greyhound influence and which disgusted some more serious members to the point of resignation (Wheeler, England, Ahrens).

In other words, the problem (of declining fortunes) is down to either the board members or the organisational system, or both. It is not possible to compare racing codes with listed companies because they are operating on different planets and the SEX rules are different to those applying to government-appointed boards.

Your mention of Myer is argumentative as that sector is in the middle of a massive change in consumer habits (DJs also). Ditto for directors shareholding and the like because that is irrelevant to the racing codes (see above). I wish it wasnt.

I sort of agree.

A particular point I was making was that governance in racing, in respect of board appointments and conflict of interest approaches, is different for all codes for no apparent reason.

Michael was hung out to dry due to the harsher approach applied to greyhound racing.

There is no reason for different governance standards to apply across codes. The differences in Victoria are both significant and unjustifiable.

Part of the problem is adoption of high governance standards in board member selection, which doesn't seem to be a major consideration for government appointed boards.

It's politics and always has been. In fact, in NSW there was a time when the board changed automatically when the government changed.

The Reform Panel membership emphasises the point. This was an area where some participant contribution would have been useful yet it got none. Current Australian racing experience was either absent or irrelevant - perhaps including the local RSPCA chief who was and is publicly opposed to racing as such. The vet member had arrived in the country only recently.

I have no idea whether Eberand was pushed or went voluntarily but in many comparable circumstances (ie a dubious case) he might have been suspended and then returned when he was found blameless. Whatever, it still illustrates the enormous potential for conflicts to emerge.

The question is whether those conflicts are likely to be sufficient to make an appointment too high a risk. My view is that in greyhound racing they are. Everything is too close to the bone. Less so at the gallops where there is more distance between, say, the breeder and the board and trainers never get a guernsey.

Equally, of all the grower-primary industry boards I can recall, none are now government controlled. Members are voted in or out. That facility is not available in racing. For purely historical reasons, governments think they can do better than the mob.

It's not a perfect science but all the evidence says we are not doing very well, and never have. Why? And where will we be in five or ten years time?