Thursday, 20 November 2025

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (22:34): (2165) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Racing, and the action that I seek is for transparency around the onsite humane euthanasia program. The onsite humane euthanasia program, or OHEP, is a service administered by Racing Victoria that allows owners to have their thoroughbred horse killed on their private property for free. The program claims it exists for when an owner has already made the best welfare outcome decision for the horse, yet some of the eligibility pathways make it hard not to question whether it is being used for convenience instead. Some eligibility pathways include a vet certification confirming a chronic injury or disease where the horse is unlikely to recover, a recommendation to be euthanised by an authorised inspector or, perhaps most concerningly, unsuccessful rehoming attempts over just 14 days or a declaration by the owner that the horse is dangerous and unsuitable for rehoming. Under this last criteria a horse can be deemed dangerous without requiring any vet assessment at all.

Last year 78 horses were killed under this program. Racing Victoria’s most recent annual report confirms that in 2024–25 that number increased to 151 thoroughbreds. We absolutely acknowledge there are times when genuine euthanasia is necessary, such as for an aged horse in chronic pain, but we also have serious concerns that the OHEP is functioning as a disposal pipeline for unwanted horses who are simply too hard to rehome. Allowing a horse to be labelled dangerous without professional assessment or killed after just two failed rehoming attempts across a mere two weeks risks turning this program into an industry-sanctioned convenience.

These concerns do not come from nowhere. In October 2019 on the ABC’s 7.30 program ‘The final race’ exposed the horrific treatment and slaughter of thoroughbreds at a Queensland abattoir. Racing Victoria then introduced the OHEP in 2021. Racing Victoria refused an FOI request from the Coalition for the Protection of Racehorses for basic information about this program. That is unacceptable. A program designed to prevent cruelty cannot become a loophole that enables horses to be quietly killed behind closed doors with no public reporting and no independent scrutiny. The public deserves to know what is happening to these horses, which the industry bred for the purposes of racing and has profited from. Therefore the action that I seek is for the minister to advise how many horses were euthanised under each eligibility criteria for 2024–25 and what the age was of each horse.