Good evening to everyone, and especially to all the greyhounds and corresponding humans who are tagging NSW premier Dominic Perrottet in *checks notes* dog shit.
Yes, you read that correctly – Dominic Perrottet’s tagged photos on Instagram are currently being flooded with images of greyhounds taking shits, often with Perrottet’s face shopped onto them.
Why, you ask, are people basically digitally flinging dog shit at NSW’s premier?
Because on top of all Perrottet’s already shitty convictions (you know, like voting against decriminalising abortion, opposing same-sex marriage, and opposing the bill calling for priests to disclose child abuse), he is also a big supporter of… greyhound racing.
It’s like the man can’t help but get on everyone’s bad side, right?
In May earlier this year, Perrottet posted a photo on Instagram posing with a racing greyhound, writing that he’s “committed” to making sure the “sport” (oh, please) is supported by great facilities, because apparently this industry is actually of great importance to the people of NSW.
“The greyhound racing industry is important for many communities in NSW,” he wrote.
“We’re committed to making sure the sport has great facilities – not only to give punters a better experience, but to improve the safety and welfare of dogs like Snowy here, which is what the upgrade to the Muswellbrook track we just announced will do.”
I’m pretty sure punters having fun is the least of Snowy’s worries, considering there have been 137 greyhound deaths and 7995 racing injuries on the track just this year, according to the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds.
A Four Corners report from 2015 exposed a dark underbelly of brutality and cruelty in the industry, including ‘live baiting’: the practice of tying down small, defenceless animals to incentivise frenzied greyhounds into a faster race.
After the report, an official government inquiry found “overwhelming evidence of systemic animal cruelty, including mass greyhound killings and live baiting”. Since then, greyhound racing was banned in the ACT, and even (albeit briefly) in NSW, before Nationals MPs and conservatives pushed a backflip.
Basically, greyhound racing is fucked, and so it’s no surprise that people have responded to Perrottet’s support for the industry in outrage. And by outrage, I mean people are taking pics of their greyhounds shitting out little Dominic Poopytots, and then tagging him as the shit on Instagram.
Now this is a movement I can get behind.
The hashtag #poopforperrottet is now home to dozens of pictures of greyhounds dumping, in efforts to get Perrottet to dump the industry. Or at the very least, as a giant ‘fuck you’, which is great too.
You can check out all the pictures here, since many of them are, suspiciously, no longer visible on Perrottet’s tagged Instagram photos. Let’s hope he bins racing from the agenda as quickly as those Insta tags disappeared, shall we?
