Today in Parliament, Abigail gave notice of a motion calling on the NSW Government to ban greyhound racing and fund a transition plan for workers and communities, after a damning performance audit, initiated by Abigail's 2024 request to the Auditor-General, confirmed systemic failures across every aspect of the Greyhound Welfare & Integrity Commission's regulatory function, including no proactive monitoring, disciplinary delays of more than two years, no staff training, and no way of measuring whether any of it is actually improving outcomes for greyhounds.

Abigail said:

I give notice that on the next sitting day I will move:

(1)     That this House notes that:

• on 16 July 2026 the NSW Auditor-General tabled its performance audit of the Greyhound Welfare & Integrity Commission (GWIC), which it conducted following Abigail Boyd MLC writing to the Auditor-General in 2024 requesting the audit;
• the audit assessed the effectiveness of GWIC’s regulatory actions to promote and protect greyhound welfare, and revealed concerning systemic failures including persistent weaknesses, gaps, inefficiencies and inaccuracies in GWIC’s systems, activities and broader compliance framework;
• the audit report made several concerning observations and findings about the effectiveness of GWIC’s regulatory actions, including the following:
  • GWIC does not conduct any proactive regulatory activity to monitor compliance across the racing industry, instead relies on intelligence that it receives from the industry about specific cases of alleged abuse, neglect or other welfare risks; 
  • GWIC has no documented evidence that it regularly analyses patterns of non-compliance or industry-wide welfare issues to guide its compliance efforts; 
  • while GWIC has increased the volume and frequency of public reporting about greyhound racing operations, it has not established a performance framework to evaluate whether its regulatory activities reduce welfare risks or improve outcomes for greyhounds, and fails to define performance measures, benchmarks or targets that link regulatory effort to intended welfare outcomes; 
  • there are extreme delays in GWIC’s disciplinary process, with some extending to more than two years between the offence and the disciplinary action being finalised; 
  • penalties for welfare breaches are being reduced simply because of GWIC’s delays, including in cases involving serious breaches like greyhound mistreatment, neglect and death; 
  • GWIC has no a formal policy or procedure to govern its decisions about referrals for criminal prosecution, despite regularly deciding not to pursue criminal prosecutions because it considers disciplinary action sufficient; 
  • GWIC’s compliance and enforcement procedure documents are outdated, incomplete and not consistently used, and operational staff are being provided with conflicting guidance such as with the use of body-worn cameras during inspections;
  • GWIC does not provide its staff with any formal induction, and does not provide any ongoing training and development, with staff relying on self-directed learning and informal support from colleagues; 
  • frontline staff at GWIC are being placed at risk of significant work health and safety concerns, with no risk management framework in place for dealing with greyhound racing participants who have histories of violence, aggressive behaviour and gun ownership; 
  • GWIC’s oversight of greyhound rehoming relies on its regulatory interactions with registered participants and information available through its own systems, and it does not routinely engage with local councils to identify non-compliance or emerging welfare risks in the rehoming process, which has created gaps such as in monitoring the transition of greyhounds on the NSW Pet Registry; and 
  • over the past 2 years, GWIC has not maintained the Greyhound Industry Animal Welfare Committee membership in line with legislative requirements, and it does not report on whether the committee’s advice was accepted, implemented or led to changes. 

(2)     That this House calls on the NSW Labor Government to accept that the greyhound racing industry is incapable of reform, and deliver a publicly-funded plan to transition workers and impacted communities out of this cruel and untenable industry, including a ban on commercial greyhound racing, training and reskilling for affected workers, and the repurposing of tracks into green community owned spaces. 

4 August 2026