Consulted, warned, closed: The greyhound industry ran out of chances
Thursday, 5 March 2026
Virginia Fallon is a staff writer and columnist based in Wellington.
OPINION: So the Racing Minister didn’t meet with the greyhound people either before or after announcing the ban on their bloodsport? Oh, please.
According to a story last week, Winston Peters “failed to consult the greyhound racing industry for more than a year before he blindsided them with a ban. And he hasn’t met them since.”
I thought that was curious. To be clear, since the ban was announced on December 10, Greyhound Racing NZ (GRNZ) have met with the Ministerial Advisory Committee that regularly reports directly to Peters, and participated in the select committee process for the Racing Industry Amendment Bill - the one that ends greyhound racing.
But still, there hasn’t been a meeting with the racing minister, nor was one required. The problem with the rest of the narrative, meanwhile, is that it requires either a heroic dose of amnesia or some very selective memory to believe.
Read more:
Greyhound racing ban shows how advocacy is replacing evidence
Win a dog, watch it die: The greyhound industry’s latest stunt
First, let’s have a closer look at the apparent failure to consult.
Greyhound Racing NZ (GRNZ) has been under review three times in the past decade, each one highlighting serious issues. None of these were minor administrative quibbles but systemic animal welfare failures: broken legs, mysterious euthanasias, track safety failures, and a lack of transparency from the industry itself.
One decade, three reviews, and repeated opportunities for GRNZ to provide input. That was the consultation.
As for the so-called blindsiding? Every review recommended significant changes, while in 2021 Grant Robertson put GRNZ “on notice” after it was found that 923 dogs were euthanised from 2017 to August 1, 2021, with no reason given for 462 deaths.
Backgrounding the reports, of course, were the headlines. A reported 232 dogs perished on and off the track during the 2020-21 racing season, which also saw trainer Francis McPhee fined for hitting his winning dog for “displaying poor manners”; dogs doped with meth; and racing suspended at one track after ongoing safety concerns.
Then in 2022, the same year two trainers were fined $2000 and banned from racing for seriously mistreating their 15 dogs, the industry was warned again when Racing Minister Kieran McAnulty declared it was on “thin ice”. Improve animal welfare and transparency, it was told, or risk closure.
Three reviews, 10 years, two official warnings and umpteen headlines. These do not happen to ethical, well-run industries; they happen when things keep going deeply wrong.
This was never an industry humming along happily before it was “blindsided” with a ban, but one with such a devastating track record that a ban had to be accompanied by urgent legislation preventing it from unnecessarily killing dogs.
Even then, the harm has not politely paused.
Since the ban was announced on December 10, at least one dog has died, 37 have suffered injuries requiring stand-down periods of between 42 and 89 days, and another 18 have been sidelined for 90 days or more.
Yet GRNZ is still attempting to claw its way back from closure. Its court appeal has failed, its PR campaign continues, and now we’re asked to somehow believe that both its inevitable demise was a bolt from the blue and it was owed some personal, ministerial, courtesy before the lights went out.
But you don’t get to call it a surprise when the cautions were written in black and white, year after year, dog after dog. At some point, accountability stops being a conversation and starts being a decision.
After 10 years of reviews, welfare failures, public polling, court action and explicit warnings, the absence of one final meeting doesn’t mean anything.
There has never been a lack of consultation, just consequence.