Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the important Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Bill 2005 in the parliament of Australia. I am particularly pleased—indeed honoured—to speak after my good friend and senior colleague in the parliament the member for Cook, who I know has a very strong interest and reputation in the world of sport. He played a very significant role in the very successful Sydney Olympic Games of 2000. This bill is important for our sporting community and for the overall reputation of the Australian nation.

We all know what illicit and unprescribed drugs can do to people’s health and wellbeing. When an Australian athlete in particular takes drugs that are illegal or illicit and unprescribed by medical professionals, the cost is very significant. It costs athletes their health, with the side effects of performance-enhancing drugs very well documented. It costs the Australian sporting fraternity its international reputation as an honest and fair competitor. It costs the faith of the Australian public, who have continually ranked sport as something special and unique to the Australian character—something which defines Australianness. In fact, 62 per cent of the adult population of this country do participate in some kind of physical activity for recreation each year, and over half of those do so through organised community sporting associations, clubs and the like.

There is also an economic cost to Australian businesses. Successful sporting events attract businesspeople from around the world and create a wealth of opportunities for Australian businesses and industries. One such example is Austrade’s Business Club of Australia. This has come to be an important mechanism for Australian businesses to piggy-back off major competition in Australia and to network with significant corporate and business figures from around the world who come to Australia, not only to enjoy high-level sporting competition but also to do business. Bolstered by $800,000 in funding from the Howard government in 2004-05, the Business Club of Australia is set to hold more than 25 business networking events across the 12 days of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. Previous networking events held by the club during the Sydney Olympics and during the Rugby World Cup in 2003 are widely seen as having been very successful, netting this country’s businesses hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business transactions. Over 190 Australian businesses have achieved an international sale as a direct result of the club’s activities during these major sporting events.

Why is this important? Because of the place that sport has in the fabric of Australian society, we can leverage off sport to further our country’s economic success. Therefore, the use of drugs by Australian elite athletes does have an economic impact. It directly impacts on businesses and mars their opportunity to leverage off major sporting events, and it tarnishes the profile of Australia as a clean and fair sporting country.

Despite all these costs, some athletes nevertheless continue to bow to the pressures placed on them by their coaches and by the public for them to do well and, in particular, to the pressure they place on themselves and turn to performance-enhancing and recreational drugs. Australia has a reputation for placing enormous pressure on its elite athletes to perform at their very best. We idolise our sporting heroes—the Bradmans, and the Pat Rafters and Ian Thorpes of today’s world. Successful sportsmen are beacons to the 1.6 million young Australians aged between five and 14 who participate in organised sports every year. At the same time, the Bradmans, the Rafters and the Thorpes stand as shining examples of sportsmanship and of Australians who have performed at an elite level and have become the best in the world without taking drugs or performance-enhancing substances. So it can be done. It is important to portray the message to young Australians who might see themselves as having great potential in the sporting arena that they can be the very best in the world, that they can be champions, without taking performance-enhancing drugs.

On behalf of the people of Ryan, whom I have the great privilege of representing in this parliament, and as a member of the government who supports this bill very strongly let me make it clear that the use of drugs in sports by a small minority of sportspeople sullies our image. Unfortunately, the fact that drugs are used by only a minority of sportspeople does not take away the fact that the impact of their use is substantial indeed.

I want to comment on the matter of obesity. An estimated 1.5 million people under the age of 18 are overweight or obese. One in 10 children under 16 is obese. One in five children under 15 is categorised as being fat or overweight. These figures are too high for us to accept as a nation. One way to try to make an impact on these figures and reduce the level of obesity is through sport. Successful sporting figures figure strongly in this country as role models. There is a role here for our sports men and women. Young Australians look up to our elite athletes as role models. If they see the reputations of their role models being tarnished in the community and in the media, if they see their role models being criticised by public figures for taking performance-enhancing drugs, that is not going to do them any good whatsoever. Kids who are overweight should be encouraged to take up sport as a way of reducing their weight. I want to say very strongly in the parliament today that what this bill is trying to do is very important. It tries to address the issue of the use of drugs and illegal substances in sport at the elite level.

As we all know, the Howard government is very committed to ensuring a level playing field for all athletes and to upholding the good name of the Australian sporting fraternity by eliminating drugs from sport. In order to achieve this, the government has introduced the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Bill 2005. In formulating this bill, the government has taken into account its obligations under international treaties and conventions, as well as the recommendations of the 2004 Anderson inquiry. The government has delivered a scheme which is tough on drug cheats but respectful of the rights of athletes.

In 1999, in an effort to coordinate and harmonise antidoping efforts across the globe, the World Anti-Doping Agency, known as WADA, was established. Subsequently, in 2003, WADA released the World Anti-Doping Code. The code is a benchmark for international antidoping authorities and sets out eight doping violations. WADA is also responsible for the creation and revision of a list of prohibited substances, the use of any of which qualifies as a doping offence. In the 2004 election campaign, subsequent to the release of the code, the government committed to ensuring that sport in Australia was as drug free as humanly possible. As part of this commitment, the government now requires all of Australia’s sporting codes to enact antidoping regulations in line with the WADA code. As of July 2005, all major Australian sporting organisations are code compliant.

The government also amended the Australian Sports Drug Agency Act in 2004 in order that it comply with the code. However, the structure of ASDA meant that amendments alone could not bring it fully in line with the code. The government acknowledges that ASDA was created by the Labor Party when it was in office in 1989, under former Prime Minister Hawke—a good example of the Labor Party doing something right, which is more the exception than the rule. However, this meant that antidoping investigations lacked both independence and neutrality—a situation that was highlighted in the 2004 investigation into Australian Olympic cyclist Mark French and in the subsequent 2004 Anderson report. In that case there was a concern that issues raised by Mr French, including claims that there was a systemic culture of doping among his fellow cyclists within the Australian Institute of Sport, were not appropriately investigated.

An inquiry, chaired by Mr Robert Anderson QC and commissioned by the Australian Sports Commission and Cycling Australia, investigated the effectiveness of their investigations into Mr French’s claims. In his recommendations, Mr Anderson QC called for an independent body with the power to investigate and carry out prosecutions of persons suspected of infractions of the antidoping code. In October 2005, Australia adopted the International Convention Against Doping in Sport, which was put forward by UNESCO. As a signatory to this agreement, Australia entered into a binding agreement to implement the WADA code. Following Australia’s formal and binding agreement to implement the WADA code, and in recognition of the findings of Mr Anderson QC, this bill will create a new authority, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, ASADA, and a new scheme, the National Anti-Doping Scheme.

In the time I have remaining, I will make some brief comments on ASADA. ASADA will assume the functions of ASDA, including retaining the role of the Australian Sports Medical Advisory Committee, created by ASDA, to provide expert medical advice. Along with its inability to investigate doping allegations, ASDA also suffered under definitions which were imposed by the Labor government, forcing it to have even more unnecessary constraints on its functions. Specifically, the ASDA Act defined ‘competitor’ as ‘any international and national athletes, or younger athletes who may become international or national level athletes’. The ASADA Bill will replace references to ‘competitor’ with the word ‘athlete’, defined as ‘any participant in sporting activity’. This gives ASADA jurisdiction over all levels of sport in Australia, to aid it in the goal of ensuring Australian sport is completely drug free. In other words, this provides more of a blanket coverage. This piece of legislation provides a wider net and brings into it Australian sports men and women across the country, which is a very important distinction.

While the ASDA Act recognised the role of persons other than competitors in the use of drugs in sport, the ASADA Bill specifically gives the power to enforce antidoping provisions against a new category of people, in addition to athletes. This new category is classified as ‘support people’. Support people are defined as being the coaches, the trainers, the managers, the agents, the team staff members, the officials and the medical or paramedical practitioners—a group of people who might place undue pressure on a young athlete. This extension of powers is designed to address the kind of systemic doping culture identified in the case of Mark French, which I touched on earlier.

ASADA’s primary functions will relate to sports drugs and safety matters. These include advising the Australian Sports Commission on sports drugs and on safety matters to be included in funding agreements with sporting organisations. It will include promoting the education of sports men and women and support personnel about sports drugs and safety matters. It also has an important role to play in the area of general support and encouragement, of course, as well as in conducting research. ASADA will also carry out the functions conferred on it and authorised by the NAD Scheme. The ASADA Bill ensures that it has the correct balance of powers to ensure that it can perform its duties without becoming a coercive body against the primary interest of athletes and support personnel—which is, of course, that athletes perform at their peak in the sporting arena.

The only limitations on the powers of ASADA are as follows: it cannot acquire or hold real property and it cannot enter into contracts or transactions or lease land and/or buildings and other like infrastructure. ASADA is also prevented from coercing any athlete or any support person into giving testimony. Although the government has been criticised by some for not giving ASADA the power to compel testimony, the government believes that this is an important limitation to ensure that athletes see ASADA not as a witch-hunting body intent on dragging the good name of athletes through unwarranted investigations but as an organisation that is there to help them—to benefit their interests by ensuring that drugs do not become rife within their sport.

We in the parliament know that when our name is put in print or in the media in a very negative way it does leave a connotation which is quite unhelpful, even though it might be completely unjustified. This also applies to athletes. When their names are on television sets in living rooms across the country, there is a connotation and an inference that they might have done something wrong, when in fact they may have done nothing wrong at all. That is a very important constraint that this bill imports into this organisation.

There is of course much more that I could say when talking about a piece of legislation introduced by the Howard government—all very positive stuff and, in this case, all in the interests of the Australian sporting fraternity—but I will conclude with some general remarks about Australia’s reputation in the sporting world. We are known around the world as a great sporting nation. We compete with the very best. Indeed, we punch well above our weight as a small nation of some 20 million people. We win world titles and Olympic gold medals in the spirit of fair competition and high sportsmanship. Equally, we lead the world in antidoping administration technology and in our very strong moral commitment to taking drugs and illegal substances out of sports and competition.

Our efforts are second to none. For the first time at an Olympic Games athletes competing in Sydney in 2000 were not just tested after their events; they were also subject to pre-Olympic and out-of-competition testing. This, combined with a new test for the previously undetectable performance-enhancing drug Erythropoietin, made the Sydney Olympics one of the most drug free Olympics ever—and a triumph for Australia in promoting our commitment to drug-free sporting events. In the weeks ahead Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, will host the Commonwealth Games. This will no doubt showcase Melbourne to the world, and it will also showcase Australia. It will showcase the very best of Australian sporting success. As well, it will showcase how very strong this country’s commitment is to fair competition and strong sportsmanship.

As the member for Ryan, and as someone who played a little bit of sport in my younger days, I hope very much that I can continue my good work in the local Ryan community, to interact with young people, with the sporting kids at the various schools in my wonderful electorate, and to convey to them the very strong and important message that there is absolutely no place in sport—or, indeed, in their lives—for drugs. Drugs damage lives and damage circles of friendships. They are no good whatsoever to sporting kids. I will take this opportunity to say that I want to continue to encourage the educators, the parents and those who hold public positions in the Ryan community—and the wider circle of friends and relatives of young people—to continue to speak very strongly about health issues with kids and grandkids and to speak very strongly about living a very healthy lifestyle, being active and saying absolutely no, no, no to drugs. Drugs are not something that we want to see infecting or contaminating the young lives of Australians in this wonderful country.

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