David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the government's Statute Update (Smaller Government) Bill 2017. It's a bill with lots of potential, if you judge it by its name. But once again, I lament the fact that the government is not going far enough. Amongst other things, the bill abolishes the group that advises ASADA, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority. Of course it's good we're abolishing ASADA's advisory group but we should abolish ASADA too.

In the late 1980s, some people came to see Ros Kelly, the sports minister at the time, to say something should be done about steroid use in sport. Ros Kelly should have told these people that sporting codes are perfectly capable of banning their players from using performance-enhancing substances. Instead, she created the Australian Sports Drug Agency, which has now become ASADA. ASADA is a government agency that tells players in various sporting codes not to use various substances from caffeine to peptides, many of which are perfectly legal. ASADA tests the players and if they find that the players used the various substances, they tell the sporting codes that the players can't play anymore. I emphasise we are talking about legal substances here, not illicit drugs. Taxpayers pay more than $12 million a year for ASADA to do this. There is absolutely no justification for it.

Sporting codes are owned and managed by private organisations. If they think that their players should not take various legal substances, they can make a rule for their sport. No-one wants to maintain the integrity and popularity of a sport more than the sporting codes themselves. Of course if the sporting codes can get the taxpayers to pay for the drug testing of their players then they will take the freebie, but that is no reason to offer the freebie. If any employer comes running to the government and says, 'Can you please test my staff to see if they take legal drugs,' a government that is looking after taxpayers should tell that employer to get lost.

What ASADA does cannot be justified on health grounds either. There is no public health case for stopping a tiny percentage of people, mostly elite athletes, from taking caffeine and peptides while letting them punch each other in boxing, torture themselves in triathlons or attack each other's hamstrings in rugby league. It is none of the government's business. Abolish ASADA and give everyday Australians a tax cut.