Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Amendment Bill 2009 and also to support the comments made by the Minister in her second reading speech when she said:

I think all of us would agree that doping and drug cheats have no place in sport.

The Australian government is committed to the fight against doping—and is determined to ensure that performance enhancing drugs are detected, dealt with and deterred at every possible opportunity.

In a sports loving country like Australia a strong anti-doping system is essential to protect the integrity of our sporting competitions and also protect our athletes from the potentially harmful health effects of using prohibited substances and methods. …

This bill amends the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Act 2006, ASADA Act, to keep the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, ASADA, Australia’s peak anti-doping in sports agency, at the forefront of global and local efforts to stamp out drug cheats.

Specifically, the bill reflects the need for new structural and governance arrangements to ensure the efficiency of ASADA antidoping programs today as well as into the future. ASADA is a key implementation agency for Australia’s antidoping efforts, supporting the Australian government in coordinating and harmonising antidoping initiatives with states and territories and of course with our national sporting organisations at the core of antidoping methods in this country. ASADA’s responsibilities include detecting drug cheats and discouraging drug use through education programs, testing, investigations and enforcement. As a former elite football coach at the under-18 level, I knew that the challenges were there then in order to educate our young athletes who were trying to get to the AFL about performance-enhancing drugs.

However, this issue is also one of recreational drug use in regard to the challenges, and I think that our country has an attitude towards recreational drug use that needs to be addressed and addressed quickly. I think that far too often we are seeing high-profile athletes as well as high-profile people come out and say that throughout their careers or throughout their life they have used recreational drugs. I think our whole culture around the recreational drug issue and the fact that some people still think that it is all right to be doing it rubs off on how young people think when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs. I touch on what the member for Cowan alluded to. For me it was Ben Johnson and the fact that as an 18-year-old watching the Seoul Olympics and very much enthralled with athletics I felt absolutely gutted the next day when I saw that this race, 9.93 seconds for the 100 metres, had been drug affected. I think we were all in awe of this athlete from Canada, but he did not quite look right, I must admit. He had a fairly big solid body and a tiny head, but he certainly ran. The next day when it came out that he was a drug cheat and had been found guilty of using anabolic steroids I think the world was in shock at how this had happened.

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