2015-10-20
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — Another jumps racing season has ended with yet more horses killed, injured or never to be seen again. Since 2000, 118 horses have been killed in jumps races and trials in Victoria and 4 horses died on the track this season. Around 50 per cent of jumps horses disappear from all forms of racing the following year largely due to injuries sustained in jumps events, not necessarily from a fall on the track. Research has shown that jumps is far more dangerous than flat racing, with catastrophic limb injuries 18 times more likely and cranial, back and neck injuries 121 times more likely in jumps events.
Last September I tabled a petition signed by 532 Victorians calling for an end to steeplechase and hurdle racing in Victoria. The Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses has so far collected a further 4700 signatures on a petition to be tabled next year. This week I will be presenting the Premier with 964 postcards signed by Victorians asking for the end of this form of animal cruelty.
Victoria and South Australia are the only two states that continue to allow jumps racing. Queensland stopped jumps racing in 1903, Western Australia in 1941 and New South Wales in 1997, and the last race held in Tasmania was in 2007. The Greens, along with the RSPCA, the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses, Animals Australia, Animal Liberation, the Humane Society International and the majority of the community, have long been calling for an end to jumps racing in Victoria. How many more horse deaths and injuries to horses and jockeys will it take for this state-sanctioned animal cruelty to stop?