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

And disappointed. After that we saw Florence Griffith Joyner, who also had a career and her life cut short through anabolic steroid use. We certainly saw the demise of Marion Jones in more recent times. I once read a survey where they spoke to Olympic athletes. The member for Makin touched on this, that they get a very small window to do the best they can. Once every four years they get to run in the Olympics and they get the world championships two years in between. There is a lot of training and a lot of effort goes in for that very small window. They once surveyed Olympic athletes and over 80 per cent said that they would take an anabolic steroid that could cost them their life if it was the difference between winning and not winning a gold medal. To me that is just an amazing statistic, to think that so many would risk their life to do it.

Think of all the great sportspeople we have had in the last century, the Dawn Frasers, the Herb Elliotts, the Betty Cuthberts and those types of athletes in that, I suppose, golden era of athletics. They were household names and fantastic athletes. They were not full-time professionals, they did not get paid anywhere near the amount of money they get paid today. They had to be amateurs to compete in the Olympics and compete in the Commonwealth Games. But they were raw athletes who could ply their trade without any sort of enhancement. The fact of the matter was that those athletes won just through sheer hard work. I find that it is totally unacceptable that athletes can use drugs in order to skip past hard work. Recently in Darwin we had the natural body-building contests. Ronnie Coleman is the seven-time Mr Olympia, I think, and I think a bit of enhancement has gone into Ronnie’s biceps; I have got no doubt about that. Certainly the natural body-building competition was there for all to see. It sends a very ordinary message, I think, that you can have a natural body-building contest and an unnatural body-building contest.

The evolution of athletes in America, who are constantly being caught with performance-enhancing drugs, especially in professional football and baseball, is a blight on sport globally. The problem is that these people have massive profiles, they are paid an enormous amount of money—as the member for Makin touched on—and they are put up on a pedestal for young people to aspire to. And it is not only at the elite level. I am sure that among the second- and third-tier athletes, who are trying to get that extra edge in order to capture their full potential and become full-time professionals, drug use would be absolutely rife. There are no protections for those athletes and there is very limited testing of those athletes. There is a lot of hearsay and innuendo about who is taking drugs and who is involved in performance-enhancing drug activities, yet there is no testing and there are no protections in place. It is not until they get to the highest level that they are caught out, or, by that stage, they may have decided to go clean and not use drugs. However, the damage to their bodies has already been done; and maybe, when using drugs in order to get to the next level, they have beaten athletes who are doing the right thing—only to fail when they get there because they are not able to use the drugs they have used in the past.

The first change in this bill is that ASADA will be headed solely by a CEO, who will be responsible for operational and strategic matters. Secondly, under the proposed new arrangements, the current ASADA members structure will be replaced with a new model to ensure that the functions previously undertaken by ASADA members continue—for example, decisions on anti-doping rule violations. Thirdly, this bill will establish an advisory group that will primarily be a consultative forum for the CEO on matters such as education, testing and investigations and provide advice to assist in the development, implementation and continuous improvement of the delivery of ASADA’s core business. The advisory group will consist of a chair and a small group of members comprising individuals with relevant skills in areas such as education, stakeholder services, sports medicine, sports law, ethics and investigations.

It is really important that this group works closely with all sports. I really believe that Australian sport is the cleanest. That is through the efforts of ASADA, but it is also about education. There is no silver bullet to address this issue. I think the education of young athletes is paramount because it is when they are 10, 11 or 12 years old that they set their own standards, their own agenda and their own ideas about what is fair and what is best for them. As a coach of elite athletes during my time with the AFL, I found that what you teach the kids at that stage of their lives they carry right through their career. I am currently training with a friend of mine, Duncan MacGillivray, whom I coached when he was 15 years old. He went on to play for six years at Penrith, two years at South Sydney Rabbitohs and four years at Wakefield Trinity. He had a 12-year professional rugby league career and he has just moved back to Darwin. I am hanging out with him and doing some training and some weights.

He was a second rower but did not carry a lot of weight. As a medium-sized player who played in a tough position, he said there was enormous pressure on him to use performance-enhancing drugs in order to put weight on. I thank God that he did not. He is a healthy specimen. He played for 12 years on his natural ability. He is certainly a role model for all the young players of the future in Darwin. They do not need to go down that track. Duncan MacGillivray was a lightweight footballer with a lot of determination, a lot of heart and a very good work ethic. He was able to edge out a career with the body structure he inherited when he was born.

The bill also introduces changes to the mechanism by which the National Anti-Doping Scheme will be amended in the future. Currently, ASADA can amend the National Anti-Doping Scheme through a disallowable legislative instrument. It is a very important bill. I fully support the minister on this issue. I think it is paramount that as a society, and certainly in our sporting community, we continue to have an anti-drugs approach and a zero-tolerance attitude towards enhancing performance through the use of drugs. I commend all the speakers who have spoken on this bill—especially the member for Cowan and the member for Makin, who have had personal experience in their own sports. The member for Cowan’s career has involved body-building and those types of activities, and he has an enormous amount of knowledge on this subject.

It will be a difficult process to continue to be vigilant in this area. I know that some countries around the world certainly do not have our vigilance and our zero-tolerance attitude. As a coach, I never wanted to put any of my athletes in a dangerous position and I never wanted them to suffer the long-term effects of decisions that I made as a coach, or decisions that our strength and conditioning coaches may have made on their behalf. I think we really have a duty of care. As a coach, you have got an enormous amount of responsibility, and when the final siren goes you want to make sure that everyone who has been in your care is not worse off because of it. When it comes down to preparing your athletes, there is no room in sport at all to enhance their preparation through the use of substances. It is not only cheating and making it an unfair playing field for all participants, but very often it is putting the life of your athletes at risk. I do not think it is an acceptable position.

I commend ASADA and I also commend the sporting organisations right across Australia that have got accreditation through their coaching programs. With my accreditation in the last 10 to 15 years as a level 2 rugby league coach, as well as a level 3 Aussie Rules coach, I think Australia is at the forefront of accreditation of our coaches. It is a holistic approach, not just teaching the skills of the game but also teaching the safety aspects of the game and educating young people about the dangers of not only social drugs but also anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.

As I said, it will be an ongoing battle. Australia has absolutely led the world with our stance on performance-enhancing drugs. I am happy to have spoken today in support of the minister. I think this is a really good bill. It is non-controversial. I know from the comments and contributions made that it is supported by those opposite. Very rarely do I agree with what the member for O’Connor says in this place, but, in his absence, I thought he made a very worthy contribution, and one that I support, on pain-killing injections. As a coach, that is a duty of care issue that you have for your athletes.

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