Greyhound racing becomes illegal in New Zealand on Saturday, closing an industry that has run here since the 1970s and leaving roughly 1,500 dogs looking for somewhere to live. The last races have already been run. Manukau Stadium in Auckland held its final meeting on Sunday, and the Southland club has finished up at Ascot Park in Invercargill, so the remaining days before 1 August are paperwork rather than sport.
The ban is one of the more unusual pieces of legislation this Parliament has passed, because almost nobody voted against it. The Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment cleared its third reading on 2 April by 112 votes to 11. Racing Minister Winston Peters, who announced the decision in December 2024, said at the time it was “a good day for greyhounds” and “a rare moment when Parliament speaks with such a strong majority, principled voice”.
The case the Government made rested on three independent reviews, in 2013, 2017 and 2021, which each found serious welfare problems. Improvements followed each report, but the Government’s position was that the gains plateaued while injury and death rates stayed high enough that the sport had lost its social licence. That is a political judgement rather than a technical one, and it is the part of the decision the industry has never accepted.
ACT was the loudest objector inside the coalition and still is. The party filed a dissenting view during the select committee stage saying it was not convinced that banning an otherwise legal industry met the threshold for that kind of intervention, and that closing down a lawful business should be a last resort. ACT MP Cameron Luxton argued for a compensation scheme along the lines of the firearms buyback, on the grounds that people who had done nothing unlawful were losing their livelihoods. He told RNZ in March that someone needed to stick up for the affected community. ACT also wanted a longer transition and full Crown funding for rehoming. It did not get any of those things, and the bill passed anyway.
What the industry did get is a wind-down structure rather than a cliff. A Greyhound Racing Transition Agency was set up to run the closure, chaired by Heather Simpson with Murray Johnson and Dr Lindsay Burton alongside her. It is funded out of money that previously flowed to greyhound racing, channelled through the TAB, which means the racing industry is effectively paying for its own shutdown. The agency can take ownership of dogs, pay for their food and care, and run behavioural training designed to make them easier to place in homes.
The most practical piece of that is a daily payment to the people who already have the dogs. Trainers and owners who keep their greyhounds while a new home is found will be paid a rate to cover the cost of feeding and housing them. Simpson told Checkpoint in April the figure would likely land “in the $20s or the $30s” a day, and that the agency was “charged with looking after the welfare of these dogs, and that’s the commitment we’re making”. It is an unglamorous arrangement that quietly solves the problem everyone worried about most, which was what happens to a dog on the day its kennel stops being a business.
Scale is the harder issue. Existing rehoming groups place somewhere between 600 and 700 greyhounds a year in normal conditions. The agency has a five-year window to clear the backlog and has said it expects to be finished in around three. Nationwide adoption drives are running through established groups including Greyhounds As Pets, Nightrave Greyhounds, KiwiKiwi Hounds and May Hounds.
The pitch to prospective owners is that racing greyhounds are far lazier than people assume. Upper Hutt adopter Julia Gray, who has taken in two dogs in the past month, told RNZ they are “the most loving, laziest dogs you will ever take in”. Rachel Rae, a co-director of Nightrave Greyhounds, said in the same story that the dogs are “very well suited to pet life, particularly in our modern busy lives”.
One loose end the ban does not close is the export of dogs to jurisdictions where racing is still legal. Up to 70 New Zealand greyhounds were expected to fly to Queensland during July, following a similar shipment the previous year. Peters’ office said in June the Government had not raised the matter with Australian counterparts because the actions of trainers, breeders and Greyhound Racing New Zealand were legal. Australian authorities have said they have no power to control how imported dogs are used once they arrive. Whether that gap gets closed is a question for the next Parliament rather than this one.
More than 1,000 people worked in the industry in some capacity. Retraining and redeployment help is being run through the Ministry of Social Development, along with mental health support for people whose income and social life were both tied up in the sport. How well that lands will not be obvious for a year or two, and it is the part of the transition least likely to generate headlines.
Racing continues in New Zealand for thoroughbreds and harness horses, and the TAB will keep taking bets on greyhound racing held overseas. What ends on Saturday is domestic greyhound racing only. With a general election due on 7 November, no party is campaigning to bring it back. If you want to check where the parties stand on this and other issues before you vote, our voting tool lets you compare their positions side by side.
Have you adopted a retired racing greyhound, or worked in the industry that closes this week? Tell us what the change has meant for you in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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