How "tough" was it for NSW Premier Mike Baird to plan to shut down the greyhound racing industry? Credit:Peter Rae In other words, what you are doing might be perfectly legal, but you are going to run into serious trouble if you lose the public's support. McHugh recommended that Parliament should decide, given the slaughter of as many as 68,000 dogs in the past 12 years who were simply deemed too slow or not fit to race, whether the industry retained its social licence to operate. Confronted by the McHugh report, Premier Mike Baird and Deputy Premier Troy Grant didn't wait for Parliament; they announced the industry would be shut down by July 1 next year. They, along with the cabinet, deemed that the industry had lost public support. The move is being celebrated by many as a brave call. But just how accurate is that?

Greyhound racing is far from the first business that springs to mind when discussing a social licence to operate in NSW. There are persistent questions over the social licences of the coal mining and gambling industries (poker machines and casino gambling in particular). Yet we see no moves to significantly curtail either of those industries in NSW. If anything, the Baird government has used its legislative powers to offer them greater support. So the measure by which the NSW cabinet decides when one industry should be banned or reined in and another should be allowed to thrive appears to be weighing quantifiable harm against societal benefit. In the case of greyhounds it was the mass killing of surplus dogs versus the economic benefit of the sport which, by one estimate, provided a $145 million benefit to the state economy in 2010 and contributes about $30 million in taxes to the state government annually.

But try applying this same test to the coal-mining industry. Mining contributes $11 billion each year to the NSW economy, according to a University of Wollongong report commissioned by the NSW Minerals Council. But the burning of coal for energy is a major contributor to global warming – an issue that threatens the future of the planet. Greenpeace International calls the burning of coal for energy "the single greatest threat facing our climate". Poker machine gambling poured about $1.5 billion in taxes into the state government treasury last financial year. Yet according to the productivity commission's 2010 report on gambling in Australia, state surveys suggest there are about 115,000 problem gamblers in the country, with about 280,000 at "moderate risk".

It said the "significant social cost" of problem gambling in Australia was at least $4.7 billion a year. NSW has about half of Australia's 196,000 pokies. Alcohol is another good example. According to an Australian Institute of Criminology report, the cost of alcohol to society in 2010 was a staggering $14.35 billion. This comprised costs to the criminal justice system ($2.9 billion), health system ($1.6 billion), productivity ($6 billion) and traffic accidents ($3.6 billion). Yes, former premier Barry O'Farrell introduced lockout laws to NSW, but only due to enormous pressure from the media after the death of two teenagers. It followed pleas from health and emergency services representatives falling on deaf ears for years. It's easy to conclude from this that the problem for the greyhound racing industry was that it is simply not lucrative enough, too small and without an influential enough voice.

This is not an argument for retaining it. Most people would agree that too often damaging industries are allowed to get away with appalling behaviour because of their undue influence over government. As McHugh's report outlined, the greyhound industry has repeatedly failed to clean up its act. But it is a reminder that all too often governments will only make "tough" decisions if the consequences aren't that politically dire for them. Sean Nicholls is state political editor.