Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Amendment Bill 2009. I listened to the member for O’Connor, who has just finished speaking, and he made a number of very constructive comments in his contribution to this debate. I speak on this matter as someone who has undergone sports drug testing on several occasions. I am familiar with the process, the procedures and the obligations of the various authorities that carry out those tests. The intent of this bill is to restructure the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and, in doing so, create three separate functions in its the structure: firstly, a new chief executive officer role to fill the head of agency role in accordance with the Financial Management and Accountability Act; secondly, a new independent anti-doping rule violation panel to make decisions on anti-doping rule violations; and, thirdly, an advisory group as a consultative forum for the CEO.

The new structure should make the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority a much more effective organisation and better equip it to deal with the emerging challenges ahead. Since drug testing was first introduced into the Olympic Games in 1968, and in Australia in the early 1980s, the challenges faced by anti-doping agencies around the world have become far more complex than previously and they will continue to increase in complexity.

For sports administrators and anti-doping authorities, the prevention of drug use by athletes poses a far more difficult task than that faced by many other law enforcement agencies. In support of that statement, I point to the following facts. Firstly, sports supremacy attracts huge sums of money, often in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars. Secondly, sports performance is associated with international supremacy amongst nations. One has only to look at the huge sums of money invested in preparation for Olympic athletes by some nations to understand the importance placed on sports performance by national governments around the world. Thirdly, national governments have been accused, from time to time, of being complicit in the administration of, and perhaps even in developing, the drugs administered to athletes. Fourthly, the science behind sports drugs is changing frequently. The ability of anti-doping authorities to keep up with the latest science presents them with an incredibly difficult task.

The black market sports performance enhancement drug industry is today estimated to be worth billions of dollars. When one combines the value of the sports drugs black market with the sports contracts, and the entertainment contracts and commercial value of the sporting sector, one begins to understand the power of the drivers and the magnitude of the obstacles faced by anti-doping agencies.

Let me make it absolutely clear: sports drug use is not limited to Olympic or Commonwealth Games athletes. I noted the comments by the member for O’Connor a moment ago when he was reflecting on the violence that he sees today, as compared with many years ago—I think he made reference to kicking someone when they were down on the ground. One of the side-effects that I am well aware of for one of the drugs often taken by athletes—and people who work in the security industry, who quite often, are the very people who secure hotels—causes extremely violent behaviour. It is not unusual to see the kind of activity that the member for O’Connor was referring to, not only because the person involved in the brawl is either intoxicated or on drugs, but also because the people who are supposedly expected to provide security are themselves taking different kinds of drugs. They do so because they need to in order to secure their employment. They need to in order to maintain the size that will give them the opportunity to gain employment in that particular industry.

Sports drug use, as I said, is not limited to Olympic or Commonwealth Games athletes at all. Whatever one looks to, the goal to win or to entertain drives some athletes to turn to drugs. I will explain what I mean by ‘entertain’. We had the comment earlier on about footballers or tennis players, but we also have professional wrestling as a good example, where predominantly the objective of whatever these athletes are doing is to entertain. The ability of these people to be entertainers is dependent on their athletic ability. Their athletic ability often drives them to turn to drugs in order to be able to perform at the level required, which in turn, provides them with the entertainment opportunity and the income that goes with it.

Sometimes the athlete is driven by the desire to win and other times by the desire to just remain competitive. At times, because performance is a sport star’s livelihood and the athlete fears being unable to continue to compete professionally, they turn to performance-enhancing drugs. Again, I am well aware of individual athletes who have done that because without drugs they are unlikely to be able to compete at the level that provides them with their income.

At times it is even driven by governments who demand results from the investments that they have made in their athletes. I think all of us in this chamber would be aware of some of the accusations that have been made in respect of the way different countries prepare their athletes for major international events. I will leave everyone to draw their own conclusions from those accusations, but it seems to me that if there were a worldwide consistent, uniform attempt to stamp out performance-enhancing drugs, we probably would not have seen some of the events that we have seen in the past with athletes subsequently being proven to have taken performance-enhancing drugs.

With the pressures of having to compete and the huge sums of money that are at stake, avoiding drug use detection has itself become an industry. Masking drugs and other detection avoidance practices have become common practices. In discussing this matter we generally focus on the need to ensure a level playing field for athletes and sport participants and there is no question that it is a critical objective. Any competitor who has an unnatural advantage because of the use of performance-enhancing drugs is not competing fairly, and it defeats the spirit of the contest.

But it goes much further than that, because competing with an unfair advantage deprives other competitors of the opportunities that come with winning. These are opportunities that may be the culmination of a lifetime of devotion, sacrifice and sheer hard work, the very qualities that should be rewarded in sports performance. These are opportunities which sometimes come only once in a lifetime, when an athlete’s performance peaks. I will explain that particular point. We often talk about sports performance in parliament, and I noted that it was raised recently when we were talking about a citizenship bill and the ability to compete in the Olympic Games which come around once every four years. For some athletes their ability to peak will only happen once in their lifetime and they need to try to ensure that that coincides, if they are wanting to compete in the Olympic Games, with when the games are held. If they are denied the opportunity to win because someone has been taking drugs, they are denied the opportunity to achieve a whole lifetime of ambition, which might have started when they were children, and they have committed their whole life to performing at that level. But with it also comes the denial of the opportunities that subsequently come from having been an Olympic gold medallist and so on. It is not just a case of people winning because they have taken drugs. The athlete who has not taken drugs has been denied so much. That is why it is so unfair and why we should do whatever we can to ensure that when athletes do compete they compete fairly and not with the assistance of performance-enhancing drugs.

There are other matters that concern me about this particular issue. To begin with, most of the sports performance-enhancing drugs that are bought are bought illegally on the black market. They are sold not by medical or pharmaceutical professionals but by drug pushers, mostly—maybe not in all cases—with limited medical knowledge or no medical knowledge at all. They have little understanding of the long-term medical effects, little understanding of the immediate side effects and little understanding of the risks associated with the drugs. There can be serious risks if the athlete has a known medical condition or is on other prescribed drugs.

Under normal circumstances, a medical professional prescribes the drugs the person has taken and takes precautions before prescribing other drugs at any time. In other words, they look at what drugs a person is on before they prescribe another drug. I am talking here not about sports-performance-enhancing drugs but about any form of drugs. They ensure that there is not going to be a contraindication as a result of other drugs being taken by the patient. When it comes to the sellers of sports-performance-enhancing drugs—I am referring to those that are being sold on the black market—the chances are that no such precautions are taken, placing the athletes at real risk. The risks are high and, in fact, can be devastating, including loss of life.

The second matter I raise with respect to the supply of sports-performance-enhancing drugs is this: not only are the drugs often prescribed and supplied by nonprofessionals but the quality of the drugs provided may be below standard. I refer to drugs which, I understand, are made by rogue pharmaceutical manufacturers or to out-of-date drugs sold by illegal distributors rather than being properly disposed of. As if that were not bad enough, I understand that there are also black market sellers who have supplied veterinary-grade drugs to athletes.

I have seen lives destroyed because of the physical and psychological side effects of performance-enhancing drugs. Equally distressing to those people was that the use of those very drugs never, ever resulted in any worthwhile or rewarding personal achievement. The drugs were sold to them on the premise ‘These drugs will achieve super wonders for you,’ and they never, ever got there, yet they had to endure the health risks that went with the drugs for no valuable gain whatsoever. Sports-performance-enhancing drugs are not only taken by elite sportspeople. I believe that there is widespread use of them right across different sectors of the community, including, as I said a moment ago, perhaps in the security industry around Australia.

The third matter I raise with respect to sports drugs is that the testing regime itself, while vastly improved since the 1980s, still has limitations in that it does not detect all drugs or drugs that are not registered or even known. There is no easy response with regard to the prevention of performance-enhancing drugs, particularly when spectator numbers are driven by the desire to witness record-breaking performances. The organisers know that, the sponsors know that and the authorities know that. The temptation to turn a blind eye to drugs is huge.

The last matter I will raise about the prevention of drugs in sport is the cost associated with the drug testing itself. Most sporting organisations engage the federal government through ASADA to carry out the drug testing on their behalf. The cost of the testing is borne by the club or organisation. The costs are quite high, and therefore sporting organisations are limited in the number of tests they can carry out. Clearly, if we could find a cheaper way of carrying out the tests, it would make it possible for organisations to carry out more tests, which would make it a little easier for them to stamp out drug taking within the sports.

There is a lot more I could say on this issue. I realise that my time is running out and that we are trying to get this matter concluded today. I will close by saying this: it will be extremely difficult to prevent the use of sports-performance-enhancing drugs through any form of regulation or procedure that we engage in. However, it is important that we do whatever we can to try and stamp them out, for a whole range of very good reasons. This particular bill, I believe, provides us with a much improved process and authority to do that. I believe that it will add to the work we are doing and to our ability to stamp out drug taking. For those reasons I support it, but I still believe we have a long way to go.

See this speech in context