NEWS ARCHIVES

Hi, my name is Rob Handyside and on behalf of all of the members of the QGBOTA let me sincerely welcome you to our website.

I currently hold the position of Vice President and it will be my privilege to inform you of current events and attempt to keep the website up to date while providing some interesting reading. I am available by phone or e-mail at any time, and my number and email address are listed in our contacts section, as are all of the committee.

I will try to provide relevant commentary on the state of our industry, with a view to eliciting change to the most glaring anomalies of our current situation, one of which is The Product Co Agreement.

I would like to digress for a moment to the world's view of the Australian greyhound. We have, over the last few decades been able to develop a breed of greyhound without peer in the world, this isn't conjecture or wishful thinking, this is fact. We have been able to do this by intelligent breeding by intelligent people and we should feel justifiably proud of this enormous achievement. We have also been able to do this under harrowing circumstances, ie: “discrimination” at many levels, mostly Governmental - Federal, State and local. Despite this we have now a situation where our greyhound product is sought after across the globe and once again we should feel proud to be a part of this. This situation didn't arise by chance or by way of Government sponsorship or intervention, it came about by intelligent, passionate people with a common goal - striving to achieve a better greyhound. You only have to look into the blogs on breeding in Australia to realise the passion and diverse ideas that are brought forth by this most beautiful of animals. This is what has taken us to World's No.1.

What we require at the moment is for some of that passion and common purpose to be levied against the most unjust and economically stupid agreement known to racing in Australia. Everybody involved in racing with knowledge of the agreement knows that it is unjust and grossly discriminatory. For those of you who have no details of what I am talking about, let me make it clear. In 1999 there was an agreement in relation to the % amount that each Racing Code (Racehorses, Greyhounds, Trots) would be paid (to enable prizemoney) from the profit pool via Unitab.  At this stage it needs to be pointed out that the people signing off on behalf of Greyhound Racing had no mandate from the greyhound community to do so (they were Government appointees). The second aspect that beggars belief is that they signed off on this agreement for15 years (why???). The absolute clincher comes in with the final clause stating that after 15 years - ALL 3 codes have to unanimously agree that the percentage be changed.

Last year the Harness Racing Board  received  many millions of dollars that WE had generated in earnings. What chance do you seriously think there is of all 3 codes agreeing to change the percentage back to market share earned? There is absolutely no point in waiting for another 5 years, this injustice must be overturned NOW!!! There are many people available to tell us that we can't do this, in the now immortal words of Obama YES WE CAN.

We require some of the qualities that took us to No.1 in the breeding world to succeed here, ie: information, understanding, communication, participation and then passion, unity and a common purpose. I wonder what an extra 6 million dollars would have done to the face of greyhound last year, how many of our minor problems would have disappeared. We feel proud because we earned it - we just didn't get it. This has been going on for years and I can state quite clearly now there is no ambiguity here, THIS IS WRONG, NOT HALF WRONG but Totally Unjust!!!

In the future I will attempt to point out the other side of the coin in relation to the sheer economic stupidity of the agreement relating to all the other participants of the racing industry. For the moment though, once again, thanks for taking the time to visit the site and Good Luck!