Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, thank you. I also recognise contributions from the member for Makin, who has competed in sport at high levels, and also the member for Cowan, who was a state representative. I saw them make their presentations here yesterday. I have had some experience of professional sport in this country, having played at a semiprofessional level for the east Perth football club in the Western Australian Football League. From my experience I can say the majority of sportspeople do not take performance-enhancing drugs. Like many matters we discuss in this place we have to cater for the minority that deliberately break the rules. All of us have seen the damage done to sports by athletes caught taking performance-enhancing drugs. On these occasions sport is often brought into disrepute and this makes it worse for everyone who is involved in the sport.

The actions of individuals often blight a country’s reputation on the international stage as well. The allegations against double Olympic gold medal winner Maurice Greene compounded a series of allegations against US sprinters. Marion Jones, who we all remember winning five gold medals in Sydney, is now serving a prison sentence for perjury after admitting to taking drugs. Tim Montgomery set a world record of 9.78 seconds in 2002 but was banned in 2005 after he was implicated in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, or BALCO, affair. Further back Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul after winning the 100 metres in a world record time of 9.79 seconds.

Jones and Montgomery were involved in the BALCO scandal, where athletes were accused of taking a concoction of performance-enhancing drugs, allegedly designed by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, to avoid being revealed in urine and blood testing. Five drugs in particular are alleged to have been used, including EPO, which is a human growth hormone, modafinil, testosterone cream and tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG.

Members will probably be most aware of EPO, which improves the ability of red blood cells to carry and transport oxygen. THG is a designer anabolic steroid, making the user bigger and stronger. This was the main drug distributed by BALCO and it ultimately proved to be the drug had brought down the organisation. BALCO sold the substances undetected between 1988 and 2002, until a US federal investigation began. At this time Don Catlin, the founder and then director of UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, developed a testing process for the drug THG. He then proceeded to test 550 existing samples, of which 20 prove to be positive for THG.

The BALCO scandal tells us two things. First, it demonstrates how the actions of a few athletes can tarnish the reputation of not only a sport but also an entire country. Members will also remember the case of Raylene Boyle, who was robbed of two gold medals, and Renatta Strecher, which tainted the reputation of the East Germans. After the wall came down, we all know about the endemic problems in their sport; it was all about achieving gold medals and not about looking after their athletes. Second, it demonstrates the need to keep a close eye on the organisations that provide assistance to our elite athletes. If a BALCO had been allowed to develop in Australia and provide assistance to Australian athletes the good name of Australian sport would have been tarnished. These both point to the importance of Commonwealth involvement in this matter, the need for strong anti-doping laws and an effective anti-doping organisation in Australia. I certainly support the intent of this bill, which attempts to provide for the latter.

The bill is based on the recommendations of the independent review of ASADA, which was commissioned by the Department of Health and Ageing last year. ASADA has come under some criticism in the past, in particular for its handling of Ian Thorpe, who was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. I would not want to cast any aspersions on this case, but I accept that there are ways in which the structure of ASADA can be improved.

I want to briefly make reference to the three main effects that this legislation will have. Firstly, the legislation will create a new ASADA chief executive officer to replace the chair and head of the agency and a new advisory group that will clarify the roles and responsibilities within ASADA. The Minister for Sport is to hand-pick this advisory group, which usually raises alarm bells when this government is concerned. This is of course the same government that gave us Professor Stuart Macintyre, a former Communist Party member, whose work includes a history of Marxism in Britain, and that promoted him as an independent voice on education, capable of designing a national curriculum. So we will be keeping an eye on the minister’s appointment for this ASADA position.

The second part of this legislation is to establish a new antidoping rule violation panel, which will have responsibility for antidoping rule violations and provide recommendations on further actions to the ASADA CEO and staff.

The third component that this legislation will alter is the way the National Anti-Doping Scheme can be amended by the new CEO. This is generally a technical amendment, whereby the new CEO will be able to make changes to the National Anti-doping Scheme, as opposed to the former system where changes had to be made by written instrument.

The changes are fairly uncontroversial and, as I said before, the coalition supports the intent of this legislation. We want to ensure we are getting the most out of our antidoping efforts. We are the party that implemented ASADA in 2006, and I note that it has developed an international reputation as a world leader in best practice antidoping regulations. We are committed to the National Anti-doping Scheme, which ensures that Australia remains compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code.

The practice of taking performance enhancing drugs goes back a long way. The Parliamentary Library have even traced the practice back to the use of hallucinogenics by the ancient Greeks. However, it was the death of an athlete at the 1960 Olympic Games which prompted a process of establishing guidelines relating to what constituted illegal performance-enhancing drugs. This eventually led to the establishment of the World Anti-doping Agency in February 1999. The Australian government was a signatory to the WADA Code and the International Convention against Doping in Sport and as such was required to implement code-compliant anti-doping policies. At this time the Australian Sports Drug Agency was only responsible for drug education. All investigations into the use of performance enhancing drugs were undertaken by the relevant sporting bodies in conjunction with the Australian Sports Commission. A much criticised investigation by Cycling Australia and the ASC in 2004 prompted the Commonwealth to create ASADA—the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.

Today the World Anti-Doping Code 2009 states:

Anti-doping programs seek to preserve what is intrinsically valuable about sport. The intrinsic value is often referred to as the spirit of sport; it is the essence of Olympism; it is how we play true. The spirit of sport is the celebration of human spirit, body and mind and is characterised by the following values: ethics, fair play and honesty; health; excellence in performance; character and education; fun and joy; teamwork; dedication and commitment; respect for rules and laws; respect for self and other participants; courage; and community and solidarity. Doping is fundamentally contrary to the spirit of sport and undermines all of those beliefs.

I agree with each of these points. My priority as a member of parliament and the director of junior development for Perth Football Club is to pass this message on to youngsters. This is partly about having a zero tolerance approach on the topic of performance enhancing drugs in Australia. Catching the cheats does send a strong message to the kids and ASADA now conducts approximately 4,200 government-funded tests a year, so many of our younger sportsmen and women will have been tested. However we must also look towards promoting the values of sport that I have just mentioned. Sport is about ethics, health, fun and joy and particularly community and solidarity and participation. Let us encourage excellence, but excellence should come after and as a product of the other qualities, so that doping does not even feature as an option in the minds of our future sportsmen and women.

I fear this government has lost its way when it comes to sport. I was looking through the minister’s media releases the other day and I could find only a tiny proportion devoted to junior sport. I see that the parliamentary secretary, the member for Blaxland, is here to deliver the minister’s response. He and I participated in a momentous sporting event when we knocked off the media last year in a cricket game. There were certainly no performance enhancing drugs on that day. There are media releases on the website on support for a world conference on women in sport and proud announcements concerning the appointment of executives. I am sure these are all worthy projects, but the minister is ignoring junior sport. She is sleepwalking through this parliamentary term without getting to grips with or showing a thorough understanding of sport in this country. The government is more concerned about amending immigration laws to allow Russian ice skaters to win gold medals for Australia than it is with grassroots sport in suburbs in my electorate like Belmont, Queens Park and Linwood, who are desperately crying out for infrastructure support for their sporting clubs. I will continue to promote grassroots sport in my electorate and I will continue to urge the government to take a similar approach at a national level. I commend the bill to the House.

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