House of Representatives

Second Reading Speech

Mr CHESTER (Gippsland - Minister for Veterans and Defence Personnel and Deputy Leader of the House)

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Australian government supports a fair, safe and healthy environment for all athletes and is committed to clean sport. Sport delivers for Australians: it provides extensive benefits from improved health through physical endeavour to the pursuit of athletic excellence and the values it teaches and encourages in every member of our Australian community.

However, sport and all it offers our community when it is clean, fair and safe is under threat. The threat of modern doping is significant, with successive national and international doping scandals over recent years undermining public confidence in the legitimacy of the sporting contest. Not only is doping a serious risk to an athlete's health and wellbeing, at its foundation, it debases all that is good about sport.

International cooperation and coordination of efforts in the fight against doping continue to improve. But even as the antidoping effort becomes more sophisticated, making it harder for intentional dopers 'to get away with it', doping continues.

As part of the 2018 Review of Australia's Sports Integrity Arrangementsthe expert panel, chaired by the Hon. James Wood AO QC, found that increasingly sophisticated doping is harder to detect by urine and blood sample analysis alone, with intelligence and investigations now indispensable in the detection of doping incidents and programs.

Accordingly, the Wood review determined a detection program involving both sample analysis and intelligence led investigations is required for the enforcement of antidoping rules, as a foundation for preventive measures and for the pursuit of non-analytical doping cases.

In the absence of significant reform and an additional funding base, including government intervention to resolve longstanding issues regarding the costs and sustainability of the sample analysis system, the Wood review found that Australia's antidoping program will be unable to address current and foreseeable future doping challenges effectively.

The Wood review also found the current Australian antidoping legislative framework requires reform to enable national antidoping capability to effectively address modern doping threats.

The government heard those warnings, and is delivering.

This is why we introduced legislation into the previous parliament to amend the ASADA Act, which lapsed due to the recent federal election. Since then we have taken the opportunity to undertake further consultation on, and refinement of, the bill being introduced today.

This bill is the first step in ensuring that Australia's antidoping legislative framework is robust, efficient and responsive to the contemporary threat environment.

The amendments to the ASADA Act will:

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streamline the administrative phase of the statutory antidoping rule violation process through removal of unnecessary and duplicative processes;

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facilitate better information sharing between ASADA and national sporting organisations through enhancing statutory protections for the information provided to the sport by ASADA;

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strengthen ASADA's disclosure notice regime and ensuring appropriate sanctions for noncompliance; and

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extend statutory protection against civil actions to cover national sporting organisations in their exercise of ADRV functions.

To the extent these reforms are currently directed to the functions of ASADA, under the government's Safeguarding the Integrity of Sportpolicy, such functions will be performed by the new single national sports integrity body being established by the government, Sport Integrity Australia, from 1 July 2020.

Australia is a proud sporting nation. We value, and we are proud of sport that is clean, fair and safe. This government will ensure that this will remain the case.

I commend the bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.