{"id":24205,"date":"2021-11-04T07:54:24","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T10:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=24205"},"modified":"2026-04-23T14:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T17:10:08","slug":"australian-greens-call-for-ban-on-horseracing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/australian-greens-call-for-ban-on-horseracing","title":{"rendered":"Australian Greens call for ban on horseracing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Australian Greens party has proposed the closure of all horseracing venues, arguing that the sport is inhumane and incompatible with animal welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Australia.- The Australian Greens part has called for a ban on all commercial horseracing. Australian Greens senator <strong>Mehreen Faruqi <\/strong>said the sport is &#8220;inhumane, deadly and incompatible with animal welfare&#8221; and claimed venues should be closed through a two-step transition plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first step would involve\u00a0the creation of a <strong>horse betting levy<\/strong> to fund the discontinuation of the commercial horseracing industry. The second step would involve the creation of a Horse Racing Transition Taskforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A<strong>\u00a01 per cent horse betting levy on betting turnover<\/strong>\u00a0would be used to fund the creation of the Horse Racing Transition Taskforce. The Greens calculate that the tax could generate nearly AU$494m in revenue in two years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\u00a0<strong>Horse Racing Transition Taskforce\u00a0<\/strong>would help those working in the industry find new employment and it would be in charge of turning horse racing venues into green spaces. It would also rehabilitate horses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mehren Faruqi told the Junkee: \u201cHorse racing kills. No horse is safe at the Melbourne Cup or at any other race. It\u2019s beyond time to shut this industry down. It can and must be done.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Horseracing popularity down but betting turnover is rising<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>According to&nbsp;<strong>Gambling Research Australia<\/strong>, the number of&nbsp;<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/australia-horse-racing-popularity-down-but-betting-turnover-is-rising\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Australians who gambled on horse races<\/a>&nbsp;declined to 16.8 per cent last year, down from&nbsp;<strong>22.4 per cent<\/strong>&nbsp;ten years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of spectators at the Melbourne Cup declined from 122,736 in 2003, to around 100,000 in 2010 and 81,408 in 2019. It\u2019s speculated that the decrease in horse racing\u2019s popularity may be related to questions about animal rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, despite the decrease in popularity,<strong>&nbsp;turnover increased from AU$22.9bn in 2010-2011<\/strong>&nbsp;to AU$26.9bn in 2018-2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Australian Greens party has proposed the closure of all horseracing venues, arguing that the sport is inhumane and incompatible with animal welfare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":21339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"The Australian Greens party has proposed a ban on commercial horseracing, citing animal welfare concerns and outlining a two-step transition plan. This plan includes a 1% betting levy on turnover to fund industry discontinuation, worker re-employment, and venue conversion into green spaces. Despite declining spectator numbers, betting turnover in the Australian horseracing vertical has continued to rise.","focusai_entities":"Australian Greens party, Mehreen Faruqi, Gambling Research Australia, Junkee","focusai_location":"Australia, Melbourne","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.9), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (0.9), operator_casino (0.9), affiliate_publisher (0.8), product_ux (0.7), marketing_crm (0.8), payments_fraud_aml (0.7), investor_analyst (0.95), supplier_vendor (0.7), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Impact of Betting Levy?","query":"What is the projected impact of a 1% betting levy on the GGR and NGR of major Australian licensed operators with significant horseracing exposure?"},{"label":"Regulatory Integration Plan?","query":"How would the proposed Horse Racing Transition Taskforce integrate with existing regulatory bodies to manage the cessation of B2C licensing for horseracing operators?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16336,158,155],"tags":[233,23935],"class_list":["post-24205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australasia-news","category-slider-home","category-sports-betting-news","tag-sports-betting","tag-sportsbook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24217,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24205\/revisions\/24217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}