Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Amendment Bill 2014. (Quorum formed) This bill brings Australia's antidoping legislation into alignment with the World Anti-Doping Authority, or WADA. These standards come into effect on 1 January 2015. I support the bill, and I want to get that on the record. I do not think the member for Melbourne could be more wrong when he says that it should never be about the individual. The individual takes a great deal of responsibility. But I do take his point about the trust that is put in young athletes. An athlete is looking for the edge.

I preface my speech on the second reading of this bill by saying that, as a footballer, as a rugby player, I peaked at very, very ordinary. I was only able to hold that standard for a couple of weeks and then I dropped back down to absolute rubbish. I love sport. A keen sportsman will always know that they are looking for the edge, no matter what it is. As a sportsman, as a competitor, you must push to the very edge. Maurice Greene would often talk about the 87 steps—87 steps was what he did in the 100-metre sprint. He analysed every step: how his foot should hit the ground; where his foot should be pointed; what his arm should be doing—how high should it be raised. Every single part of it was about getting the edge. That is what drugs in sport is about.

We are not just talking about football here; we are talking about individual sportspeople as well. I notice the member for Makin is going to speak after me. The member for Makin was a very good powerlifter in his day. The thing you have to remember and the thing I love about powerlifting is that it is such an intense sport. You can feel the fibres in your legs tearing as you try for that extra little bit. The member for Makin will know that in the sport of weightlifting, where you need high muscle mass and great explosive speed, the temptation to take that little bit extra is very, very real. The people who do not do it are the true champions, but they do not always get the medals.

Who of us will forget watching the 100-metre sprint at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when Ben Johnson just streeted the field and left Carl Lewis and the English guy, Lindford Christie, in his wake. It was sport's darkest day. Fast forward to 1992, when you saw Florence Griffith Joyner, who, in 1988, was a slim girl. She turned up at Barcelona as the supreme athlete. I remember talking to Tracey Belbin, who had won gold in Seoul for Australian hockey. She was talking about how they had done their pre-training in Darwin to get themselves ready for the heat in Barcelona. They turned up at the games and were as good as they could possibly be, but they suddenly turned around and there was Florence Griffith Joyner—and they knew what it was

What sports people do is look for the edge, and some people cannot make it on their own and they will look for the edge chemically. That is what we have to watch out for. That is why the penalties must be carried by the athlete. Marion Jones knew exactly what she was doing all the way through and she chose to follow that. That is why ASADA and WADA and those sorts of bodies must be involved in this space, because it is a race against the pharmaceuticals and it is a race against the people who have huge investment in these things—and the people involved are mere products. That is what we have to do. The member for Oxley gave his speech on the second reading—and he is a guy who loves his cycling. The sport of cycling has awful trouble in relation to performance enhancing doping and EPO and those sorts of things.

I cannot leave this topic without talking about the darkest day in Australian sport, being 7 February last year. I do not blame the member for Blaxland or the senator for the ACT for what they did. Politics at times can be a very dirty game. What the Labor Party did last year was come out and point the finger fairly and squarely at the chest of my North Queensland Cowboys with no evidence against the Cowboys whatsoever. Those players are not just professional athletes; they are members of my community. People like Dallas Johnson and Glenn Hall are parents, fathers in my community, and they were cast with the pall of being drug cheats. I do not blame the member for Blaxland or the senator for the ACT for what they did, because what they did was follow instructions. What they were told to do was go out and create a distraction. They did not care and the government of the day did not care who they hurt. Supreme athletes like Johnathan Thurston and Matthew Scott, at the upper echelon of the game, are being cast with the pall of having to prove themselves as not being drug cheats. It is outrageous.

Can I tell you a story about Matthew Bowen, the mercurial North Queensland fullback. On his first trip away he scored a try. What they do is they give you a beer to drink in the sheds afterwards. Matthew Bowen was born and bred in Hopevale. He went to school at Abergowrie and joined the Cowboys after. In the dressing sheds afterwards he had two mouthfuls of beer and said, 'I don't know how you drink this stuff.' You will never find a cleaner athlete in the world than Matthew Bowen. Yet he had to turn up and disprove himself as a drug cheat. That is what happens in this place.

I prefer to call myself a parliamentarian than a politician because it hurts when you have to front people and say: this is what politics does to people. People like Laurence Lancini, who was the chair of the Cowboys at the time; Peter Jourdain, who was the CEO; Peter Parr, who tells these players that they can trust him; and Neil Henry, the coach at the time—they all had to go out there and do the right thing. Everything that happened with Essendon and the peptides, I feel very, very strongly for the players involved. They were looking for that edge and what they were being told by the club, in that instance, is that what they were doing is legal. When you are in a team sport, you have to buy into the entire team ethos. They were being told that it was legal.

Paul Gallen plays for the Cronulla Sharks and when he plays for the Sharks and he plays for New South Wales I hate him—I wish he played for the Cowboys—but he has just copped a $50,000 fine because of what he did on the instructions of his club. He was not a 17-year-old child. He was a seasoned athlete and a professional athlete at the peak of his powers, but he still trusted his team and his club and he would take the things that they gave him. They told him that it was okay to take them. I disagree with the member for Melbourne. At the end of the day, it is up to the individual, because the coach does not get the award and the club does not get the award. It is the individual who gets the gold medal. It is the individual who goes into the record books. Marion Jones has been expunged from the record books, but that does not help.

I stand by this bill and I think that what we are trying to do in this place is right, but there will always be a battle between those people who do it naturally and those people who need the edge. I do not think there is a more competitive place in Australia than inside this chamber. People will do what they can do to get an edge, to get in front of things. I guarantee that if there was an illegal drug that could get you to the end and get you a promotion in politics, there would be people in here that would take it. I would not take it. I am flat out taking Pepsi Max-tides let alone peptides. I do not want to sound flippant on this because it is a very important subject. I cannot let it slip without saying that the North Queensland Cowboys were maliciously maligned by the previous government and it was a dark day for everyone here. There are so many things that professional footballers and professional athletes have to go through and those people who have been able to get through it and put their bodies on the line week after week and do the hard yards must be supported. I thank the House for this opportunity to speak on this and I commend the bill.

See this speech in context