Racing Minister Winston Peters has announced the Government’s plans to end greyhound racing in New Zealand.
“This is not a decision that is taken lightly but is ultimately driven by protecting the welfare of racing dogs,” the Minister said in an announcement at the Beehive on Tuesday afternoon.
Holy shit, I did not have this on my bingo card!
I wonder if this will make the racing industry donate more to his next election campaign (i.e. the Greyhound folks didn’t donate enough so he threw them under the bus to send a message to the rest), or less.
Maybe he intends to retire anyway so doesn’t need their support anymore.
I just clicked through to the article that this article links to, and saw that he’s been getting a lot of pressure and Luxon wanted to ban it. Perhaps this was part of some deal, or that Luxon simply convinced him he needs to do it if he doesn’t want to risk all racing being banned. It seems that 2017 report was pretty bad, and no progress has been made despite attempts.
Winston is a master manipulator so I’m sure he’s getting something out of this.
OK finally some policy I can get behind. I didn’t realize they were being treated badly but if that’s the case then we should absolutely ban it.
Nice. Finally a good policy decision.
