Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I never had a chance of being picked in the AFL draft. I wish I could have been; I think there are many people who wish they could have been, but there are precious few of us who are actually on the list.

But there are some who are on the list and there are some who get picked and they go, when they have the good fortune to be picked, into an AFL club—that being the code of choice in my area and state. When they go into that AFL club, for many of them, it is the dream of a lifetime—something they have been working towards for a very long time. Most of them, when they are picked and go in—or certainly many of them—are teenagers. This may be the first time they have moved away from their home town. It might be the first time that they move out of home. It might be the first thing that would count for them as a full-time job. So they get a gig with an AFL team as a teenager. What could be better? When you are in with that club, which is now effectively run as a big business, as they all are now, you are surrounded by people who you think have your welfare at heart. Those people are going to advise you on all sorts of things. They are going to advise on how to behave in public, how to play on the field and, as we are finding out in Victoria and right around the country, they are going to advise you on what to take. In some cases that advice is not necessarily voluntarily offered and you pretty much have no choice. It is going to be a rare teenager who has just been picked to start their football career in something like the AFL, or it could be any other code, who is going to speak up. You are going to do what you are told. In fact it may even be in your contract that when the people around you tell you to do something you have to do it, otherwise your position at that club might be under threat.

It is those people, the individuals who find themselves at the centre of sport as athletes, who should be our first priority. Maybe after you have been at the club or in the league for five or 10 years you have a bit of bargaining power of your own. But it is the ones who come in, who are there because they are fulfilling the dream of a lifetime but are doing what they are told, who should be our central focus when we are considering this bill. At the end of the day, taking action against doping should be about promoting their welfare first and foremost. Secondly, it is the people around them who may be supplying them and directing them to use illicit substances who should be the ones subject to criminal penalties. In other words, support the welfare of the athletics; and target those who are trying to do things to the athletes that might in fact do them harm.

But that is not what this bill does; it has it the other way around. Although it has the laudable aim that everyone of us in here would support, which is to protect athletes and stop drugs in sport, it does not do that. It increases penalties on the athletes, possibly to the point where for many of them it could be career ending, in situations where parts of the bill are poorly drafted and where we know that ASADA does not have the resources to do its job properly. We should be having the review of ASADA and making sure that it is properly resourced to do its job before we take steps that could end people's careers, when they are the ones that we should be trying to protect.

The thrust of the proposition that was put forward in the committee inquiry process from the Law Institute of Victoria and the Commercial Bar Association was that the bill penalises athletes for their associations. What they said, and what we agree with, is that a more effective way of addressing antidoping violations would be to amend the Crimes Act, as most of the offences involve prohibited substances. Amending the Crimes Act, rather than penalising athletes, would put the pressure back on people who are in effect drug dealers rather than the athletes.

As I mentioned, there are some drafting concerns with this bill. The definition of who constitutes a 'support person', the people who are surrounding the athlete, is vague. It could be, as even people who supported the bill submitted to the inquiry, so broad that it captures family members and innocent people who are surrounding the athlete and trying to support them to do the right thing, especially in situations where they may not have the full information. They may be encouraging them to take the supplement or the drug in question without knowing what it is, but doing it because they feel that it is the right thing to do and that is what the club has told them to do.

The Commercial Bar Association has raised concerns with the term 'support person', pointing out that the broad and vague terms could include parents of young, nonprofessional athletes as well as those involved in deliberate doping. The Australian Athletes Alliance, which represents Australia's eight major player associations and over 3,500 elite athletes in Australia, strongly oppose the bill on a number of grounds—principally, that the bill does not protect the rights of clean athletes who would be subjected to an ineffective antidoping regime.

There is a gulf between the problem of doping and cheating in sport, which we all want to tackle, and the outcomes that this bill claims that it will achieve. One of the things that this bill ignores, sadly, is the role of collective bargaining in allowing codes, leagues, players and clubs themselves to enforce strict obligations to ensure, essentially, that they have a safe workplace. The priority should be that they are entitled to a safe and drug-free workplace. That is how we should be thinking about this—ensuring that the athletes have a drug-free workplace and life. That type of collective bargaining operates elsewhere around the world, but this bill penalises the athletes instead of the targets, which should be those who peddle and promote illegal drugs in sport.

I mentioned before the penalties. The stipulated penalties double, from two to four years, the ban on the athletes. This is important because the principles and the code against which this bill is being assessed were generated in the context of Olympic athletes. That is every four years, but when you are dealing with someone who has a much shorter playing career, where they are required to be there year-in year-out, a four-year ban could be career ending. No justification or evidence was presented to the committee inquiring into this legislation as to why the penalty should be increased to four years. No account was taken of the fact that the code and the principles were developed in a different environment.

As I mentioned, ASADA also needs to be better resourced. Even the World Anti-Doping Agency has been critical of ASADA's time delays and inability to provide speedy resolutions to antidoping cases. As it stands, this bill presents several problems for Australian sports and Australian athletes. What we need is a wide-ranging inquiry into ASADA before this bill is voted on. Given that this bill is designed for Olympic and world-class athletes, given that it will have an incredible impact on people who need our support rather than being penalised and given that it does not penalise the right people but targets the wrong ones, we are not in a position to support this bill as it currently stands.

See this speech in context