Name: Standing Committee on Environment and Public Affairs (Racing and Wagering Western Australia - Part 2 of 2, 23 October 2026)
Uploaded: 2026-10-23T01:00:00+00:00
Duration: 5192 s

00:01 - 00:50

Speaker 6

For question 42 in your July answers, you advise that the 50 greyhounds reported in the annual report under retirement information as deceased due to injury includes all greyhounds deceased due to a race-related injury, 38, and those unassociated with a race or public trial, 12. According to the table of racing injury incidents in your annual report at page 39, there were just 16 on-track deaths in 2024-25. However, there were actually 38 race-related deaths, with the remaining 22 deaths being greyhounds that succumbed to on-track injuries later, that is did not die or were not euthanised on track. Is that a correct reading of the report?

00:50 - 01:16

Speaker 2

So, yes. So the euthanasia reporting in the annual report is, as I mentioned previously, is reported to the type of injury, so whether it's a medical event or an injury event. So we do record those greyhounds that go off course for further veterinary assessment and subsequently euthanised because of those injuries sustained during racing, and they are in those statistics.

01:16 - 01:27

Speaker 4

So, just for clarification, the 22 additional deaths from on-track injuries are included in category F, serious injuries, Correct. which includes 92 injuries in total. Is that the correct reading?

01:27 - 02:07

Speaker 2

That's the So the total number of greyhounds that were deceased in FY25 due to injury are 50 greyhounds from the annual report, and of those greyhounds, it includes both those that were deceased on track, those that were deceased off track due to race-related injuries, and those that were deceased other injuries that were unrelated to racing. So there was 12 that were unrelated to racing entirely, and the remainder have been race-related injuries. So that's 38 were race-related injuries, with 16 of those occurring on track.

02:07 - 02:11

Speaker 1

16 on track. Okay.

02:11 - 02:16

Speaker 2

So the category F injuries are in that report as well. Yep, yeah.

02:16 - 02:33

Speaker 3

Just quickly checking if you've actually answered this next question. That was pretty much answered in the next, wasn't it? How do you respond- So, how do you respond to the suggestion that the reporting methodology obscures the number of serious on-track injuries resulting in death or euthanasia?

02:33 - 03:25

Speaker 2

So we record those injuries internally and we have provided those details of those injuries that occur off-track through FOI and other means when requested for the details, but that's the standardised reporting that we've adopted. The reporting that we adopt on-course is consistent with all racing greyhound racing jurisdictions in Australia and it's important that we have that consistency so that we can compare our euthanasia rates or our serious injury rates or any other rate that we wish to. But we aren't, but we are reporting all of those injuries, but not as an off- directly as an off-course euthanasia associated with that race-related injury, but they are in the injury data, reported as an injury of those 50 dogs.

03:25 - 03:55

Speaker 5

Is there any concern sort of expressed around the transparency of that? Like I do understand the need to have consistent data, but then often people will present new ways of delivering data as industry leaders.

Is there ever any discussion amongst RWWA to perhaps alter the way the data set is presented to guarantee I guess what someone looking from the outside might view as transparency?