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Well, that didn’t take long did it? If there has ever been a sport that has been mismanaged as badly as greyhound racing, they have my greatest sympathies.
This week, however, the Special Commission of Inquiry for greyhound racing in NSW decided to join the circus of spin-doctors, making the news with some eyebrow-raising ‘statistics’. I was asked by quite a few people yesterday whether these figures could possibly be true. There were several assertions made by Stephen Rushton QC which ranged from true to downright false, but mainly the latter.
Let me do a true/false thingy one by one.
“Greyhounds Australasia note that the industry Greyhounds as Pets Program rehome only around 6 per cent of all pre-raced and retired greyhounds. On these figures, that means just 600 animals nationally, 600.”
False. I wrote an article about this, in Victoria alone over 800 greyhounds are re-homed annually. Of all the claims made Monday this was the worst.
It treats people who diligently work to get the best outcomes for greyhounds with contempt, and he needs to have the dignity to publicly correct himself. Mind you, it was nice of him to say it twice to ensure that we know he can’t count.
“The numbers retained by individual owners and trainers is unlikely to be statistically significant, and Greyhounds Australasia does not suggest otherwise.”
Both false and unintelligible rubbish at the same time. This is not a case where “statistically significant” has any meaning, there is no comparison between variables or test of a null hypothesis, and I have no idea what the 95 per cent confidence interval could possibly be. It would only be used by someone who is pretending to know what they are talking about.
In contradiction to this claim, the Working Dog Alliance, an independent organisation, reported that nearly 1000 of the greyhounds born in NSW in 2010 had been recorded as retired in this manner, and this figure did not include brood bitches and teaching greyhounds.
A self-selecting survey which is less reliable had over 75 per cent of industry participants owning at least one old brood bitches and retired greyhound.
Further, Mr Rushton SC claimed to have read their report earlier in his address. Clearly he didn’t read it all the way through, or didn’t understand it, or ignored the relevant evidence.
“4 in every 100 greyhounds born each year will make it beyond forty two months of age.”
Physically impossible and flatly contradicted by the Working Dog Alliance Figures above. Any cohort of animals requires a breeding stock to maintain a stable population, if only 4 per cent of greyhounds make it to that age, it essentially leaves approximately 700 greyhounds a year as breeding stock. We know that breeding stock is at least 3,000, so the claim is simply wrong.
“Greyhounds, Commissioner, might be lovely animals but these figures (7 500) seem to contemplate that sooner or later every family in Australia will have a greyhound within their home which has been discarded by the industry”
If greyhounds lived to 2,000, maybe. They don’t. False. The common theme here is basic mathematics.
“So far this year, that is, in 2015, there have been 1,225 litters registered which have been produced by natural services and so far 7,964 pups have born.”
False. The statistics for litters whelped are publicly available on the dogs website. In the pdf ‘NM’ stands for natural mating. Count them for yourself. This mathematics thing again. And this is getting boring.
“Well, whatever way you look at it, it is just not the case that the (breeding) numbers are at a low.”
Unless you plot them on a graph with linear lines of best fit. To be fair, this is slightly harder mathematics.
Mr Rushton SC has basically regurgitated a “secret memo” from Greyhounds Australasia as fact. Within the memo Greyhounds Australasia were trying to justify generating nearly $2 million in annual revenue as fees. That’s why the maths are so obviously wrong, and owners and trainers associations and the State bodies responded by getting professionals to determine the actual numbers, because it was just a transparent cash grab with exaggerated figures.
Mr Rushton SC has conflated internal politics with the truth, and the outcome is that the public have been misled. Lazy by Greyhounds Australasia, lazy by the Counsel Assisting the Commissioner, and would be lazy even if the research was done by a graduate student.
“Now, what I have just said, Commissioner, is not evidence – of course not. My 10 comments and submissions reflect no more than my preliminary views, as Counsel Assisting, based upon the investigations undertaken and material received so far.”
Actually, that’s true, but have you seen any news reports that made this disclaimer, that these were preliminary views, not evidence? Thought not.
On a very serious note, we talk a lot about integrity in racing, and there is never enough of it. But this Commission of Inquiry requires integrity, and to contain so many outright falsehoods in the first day of public hearings is just plain daft.
Simply claiming a ‘secret memo’ must be right when the evidence is overwhelming that it is not is just not acceptable for people at that level of the legal fraternity. Moreover, it actually has the opposite effect, slowing down the changes required in the sport as second-rate managers claim they improved things, when all they did was count the numbers accurately.
In my view, the Counsel Assisting must either correct these falsehoods and specifically apologise to the staff at the Greyhound Adoption Programs in this country, or consider his position. At the moment, attacks on the integrity of this inquiry are inevitable to keep a somewhat aloof legal profession honest.
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