Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill 2026

Mr LEESER (Berowra) (12:05): I rise to speak on the Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill 2026. The coalition supports strong laws to protect the integrity of Australian sport. Match-fixing and the manipulation of sporting competition are serious matters.

They undermine confidence in sport. They can cause significant financial and reputational damage. They can cause and create opportunities for organised criminal activity.

The coalition recognised this in government. While we will not oppose this bill in this place, we have concerns with the way in which the bill has been drafted and we will be pursuing these concerns through the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry. The legislation creates serious Commonwealth criminal offences, including offences carrying up to 10 years imprisonment and very substantial financial penalties.

Parliament has a responsibility to make sure that those offences are clear, proportionate and workable. As noted, this bill has been referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for report by 2 October, and there are important issues that the government needs to explain through that committee process. It's worth remembering how we got here in the first place.

The former coalition government commissioned the Wood review into Australia's sports integrity arrangements in 2017. It reported in 2018 with 52 recommendations. We responded in February 2019 and then we acted; the coalition signed the Macolin convention, and we were the first country outside Europe to do so.

We established the National Sports Tribunal. We established Sports Integrity Australia, bringing together the ASADA, the National Integrity of Sport Unit and the integrity functions of Sport Australia. We funded enhanced antidoping and criminal intelligence capability.

So, this legislation does not start this work; it continues work begun by the coalition. There's also a broader point that shouldn't be lost. The criminal offences were only one part of the reform agenda identified by the Wood review.

There are still significant elements that have not yet been completed. The first is the proposed Australian Sports Wagering Scheme. Wood envisaged a national approach to sports wagering—one national framework rather than different arrangements across eight states and territories, including integrity arrangements and centralised reporting of suspicious betting activity.

Work on that scheme began under the coalition before the 2022 election. Labor has not completed it. The second element is a proper protected disclosure framework.

Players, officials and others involved in sport need confidence that they can report serious sports integrity concerns. This bill does not establish that framework. The government has instead chosen to leave reporting obligations largely to sporting codes and to contractual arrangements, and the bill provides no specific protection for a player or an official who comes forward.

This bill creates seven new Commonwealth sport integrity offences. They deal with corrupting a sporting event; offering or providing a benefit connected with corrupt conduct; asking for, receiving or agreeing to receive such a benefit; destroying or concealing corrupt conduct information; using or communicating corrupt conduct information; possessing that information with the relevant criminal intent; and improperly using or communicating inside information.

The penalties are substantial. For the most serious offences, an individual may face imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of up to $3.64 million. For bodies corporate, penalties can reach the greater of $36.4 million, three times the benefit obtained or 10 per cent of annual turnover.

The coalition supports serious consequences for serious corruption, but the seriousness of those penalties makes the proper scrutiny of the bill all the more important. This bill departs from the Wood review. The first issue that we have is with the government's decision to depart from the Wood review on the wagering nexus.

Wood specifically recommended that Commonwealth match-fixing offences be linked to wagering outcomes. This bill generally doesn't do that. The government has chosen to protect the integrity of the sporting contest itself, regardless of whether wagering is involved, and the government should explain clearly why it's chosen to go further.

That becomes particularly important because the penalties in this bill are deliberately calibrated in some circumstances to allow access to serious investigative powers, including electronic surveillance. Wood recommended calibration in relation to wagering linked offences. The parliament is therefore entitled to understand whether those powers remain proportionate across the broader range of conduct the government has now chosen to criminalise.

The next issue, and an important one, is who this legislation actually catches. Much of the government's public case understandably focuses on sophisticated match fixing, organised crime and international gambling syndicates, but the legislation itself is much broader. There's no minimum level of sporting competition before these offences can apply.

They're not confined to professional sport. They're not confined to national sporting organisations. They're not confined to competitions where wagering occurs.

The government's own material makes clear that organised junior sport can fall within the scheme. Indeed, one of the reasons given for removing the wagering link is that betting is generally not permitted on under-18 sporting events. The concept of a sporting body is also potentially broad.

The bill relies in the first instance on the ordinary meaning of that term. The explanatory memorandum says that the intention is to capture sporting events linked to organisations that administer, govern, approve, endorse, sanction or license organised competitive sport. Potentially, we're talking about far more than just the AFL, the NRL, Tennis Australia or Cricket Australia.

We may also be talking about district associations, junior leagues, school sporting associations and suburban competitions. Importantly, volunteers are expressly contemplated in the provisions dealing with the standards of integrity. Of course, serious corruption does not become acceptable merely because it occurs outside elite sport, but, where the government is extending serious Commonwealth criminal law into community and junior sport, the boundaries need to be absolutely clear.

Sport involves judgement calls every day. A coach rests a player. A team changes tactics.

A player is withdrawn. A club forfeits a fixture. An official makes a disputed decision.

A committee makes a decision that someone else believes is wrong. Those things can happen in sport. The explanatory memorandum itself recognises that well-intentioned mistakes and misunderstandings should not be caught in relevant circumstances, and that's important, but we need to make sure there's a clear distinction between genuine corruption and ordinary sporting decisions, disciplinary issues or honest mistakes, because we're not talking about an internal sporting sanction, we are talking about Commonwealth criminal offences.

We are talking about the Commonwealth Criminal Code. We're talking about offences which carry years of imprisonment. Community clubs, coaches, officials and volunteers should be able to understand where that line is.

They should not have to wonder whether an ordinary sporting decision could somehow bring Commonwealth criminal law into play. The Senate committee should therefore test carefully which organisations and competitions are capable of being captured, what conduct is intended to fall within the offences and whether further clarification is needed. There is also the question of corporate liability.

Some sporting organisations will be bodies corporate, and the bill provides very substantial corporate penalties, including penalties calculated, in some circumstances, by reference to annual turnover. We need to make sure that there are no unintended consequences—for example, the pursuit of an ordinary community sporting club over an innocent error. Parliament should ensure that the law itself provides sufficient clarity and protection against such a possibility.

Good criminal law should be clear on its face. That brings me to another important issue for the Senate committee: the ministerial declaration powers. This bill gives the minister responsible for administering the Criminal Code significant powers to determine what sits inside the scheme.

The minister may declare by notifiable instrument that an event is a sporting event for the purpose of these offences. The minister may also declare that an event is not a sporting event. The minister may declare that a person, a body or an organisation may be a sporting body.

Those powers matter. They're not simply administrative housekeeping. The definition of 'sporting event' is fundamental to the operation of those offences.

Whether an event falls within the definition can determine whether conduct is potentially subject to offences carrying up to 10 years in prison. Similarly, whether an organisation is treated as a sporting body can affect whether an event falls within the scheme at all. The government says these powers are needed to deal with cases where there may be uncertainty.

The explanatory memorandum points to examples such as horse racing, machine sports, mind sports and organisations such as the PGA of Australia. There may be a good argument for flexibility in difficult cases, but the question for this parliament is not simply whether flexibility is useful. The question is: what safeguards should accompany a ministerial power that can materially affect the reach of serious Commonwealth criminal offences.

There are several matters that the Senate committee should examine. First, these declarations are made by notifiable instrument and are therefore not subject to ordinary parliamentary disallowance processes. That's significant.

Parliament is creating these criminal offences but, under this model, the executive can then make declarations which affect their prospective reach without the ordinary capacity of either house to disallow the instrument. Second, the bill does not prescribe detailed statutory criteria governing the exercise of these powers. It does not specify the matters the minister must also take into account.

It does not require consultation with the sporting body or other affected parties. The material before us identifies no specific mechanism for reviewing an individual declaration. Third, the power operates in both directions.

The minister can effectively bring an event within the scheme, but the minister can also declare that an event is not a sporting event. That means the power can potentially widen or narrow the prospective operation of these criminal laws. That deserves close attention.

As a matter of principle, when parliament creates offences carrying up to 10 years imprisonment, there's a legitimate question about whether an executive declaration capable of materially affecting the scope of those offences should be subject to stronger safeguards. Should these instruments be disallowable? Should the legislation prescribe statutory criteria?

Should consultation be mandatory? Should there be greater transparency around the reasons for a declaration? These are entirely reasonable questions for the committee to ask.

Indeed, these are precisely the types of safeguards that deserve examination—whether these powers should be exercised by disallowable legislative instrument or, at the very least, subject to statutory criteria and consultation. Where serious criminal offences are involved, clarity and accountability matter enormously. These two issues are connected, and these two issues—the breadth of who may be captured and the ministerial powers—should not be considered in isolation.

The bill potentially extends into community and junior sporting competitions. At the same time, it gives the executive significant powers to determine which events and sporting bodies sit within the scheme. That combination warrants careful scrutiny.

We want the legislation to capture genuine corruption wherever it occurs, but we also need to ensure that the thousands of Australians who coach, officiate, administer and volunteer in community sport understand exactly what the law requires of them. There is then the issue that sat at the heart of the Wood review—the issue of national consistency. Wood recommended national offences similar to those in New South Wales, while continuing to encourage greater consistency across state and territory laws.

This bill establishes Commonwealth offences, but the different state and territory regimes remain, and the Commonwealth model itself differs materially from the New South Wales model. The New South Wales model is linked to corrupting betting outcomes. This bill is generally not.

The bill also creates a possession offence which the government's own explanatory material acknowledges does not exist in any state or territory, so the government should explain what further discussions are occurring with the states and territories. What is the plan for greater national consistency, and is this legislation the end point of that reform or another step towards it?

There's also the practical question of enforcement. The government has allocated $1.2 million over three years and $600,000 a year ongoing to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions. But the material accompanying the bill identifies no corresponding new funding under this measure for the Australian Federal Police to investigate these offences or for Sport Integrity to educate sporting organisations and participants about their operation.

That in and of itself deserves examination—because passing a criminal offence is one thing; making sure it can actually be investigated and prosecuted and understood is another altogether. If these offences are going to extend into community sport, education will be particularly important. Let me say something about the Macolin convention.

The relationship between this bill and the Macolin convention needs to be clear. The convention requires action across a broader range of areas than criminal offences alone, including wagering, regulation, suspicious-bet reporting, information sharing and international cooperation. This bill addresses an important part of that framework, but it does not complete it.

Importantly, the bill also goes beyond what the convention itself requires in some respects. The bill creates three information offences which the convention does not require, while other important parts of the integrity framework, including wagering regulation and protected disclosure arrangements, remain unfinished. Parliament is entitled to legislate beyond the minimum requirements of an international convention.

But, where the government has chosen to go further in creating criminal offences while other parts of the reform architecture remain incomplete, it should explain why. This bill has been referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for report by 2 October. The coalition will use this inquiry to pursue its concerns, and, importantly, given the breadth of these provisions, the committee should hear from sporting organisations, including those representing community sport.

We want proper answers to the legitimate questions raised by this legislation. We want to understand the practical reach of the offences, we want to understand the safeguards around the ministerial powers, we want to understand how the broader Wood and Macolin reforms will be complemented and we want to understand whether the agencies responsible for enforcing and explaining these new laws have the resources that they need.

Australian sport matters enormously to our national life. Australians expect that sporting contests will be genuine. They expect players, officials and administrators to act with integrity, and, where people deliberately corrupt sport for financial gain or other improper purposes, there should be—there must be—serious consequences.

The coalition has a very strong record in this area. We commissioned the Wood review. We signed the Macolin convention.

We established Sport Integrity Australia. We established the National Sports Tribunal. We support strong Commonwealth criminal laws dealing with serious sports corruption.

But serious criminal laws require serious scrutiny. We need to be clear about who is caught. We need to be clear about where ordinary sporting decisions end and criminal conduct begins.

We need to be satisfied that the ministerial powers which can affect the reach of these offences contain appropriate safeguards and appropriate parliamentary oversight. We need to make sure the broader reform agenda is actually completed. We support strong sports integrity laws.

Our job now is to make sure they are clear, properly safeguard and actually work. That's why the coalition will use the senate committee process to do just that. As I've said before, we support strong laws to protect the integrity of Australian sport.

Match fixing and the manipulation of sporting competitions are very, very serious matters. They undermine public confidence in sport, and public confidence in sport is so important. They can cause significant financial and reputational damage—damage that undermines that public confidence and undermines confidence in the individual competitors—and increasingly they can create opportunities for organised criminal activity.

We on this side of the House recognised that when in government. As I said at the beginning, while we won't oppose the bill in this place, we do have concerns with the way in which the bill has been drafted, and we will be pursuing those concerns through the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry. This legislation creates very serious Commonwealth criminal offences, including offences which can carry up to 10 years imprisonment and very, very substantial financial penalties.

Parliament has a responsibility to make sure that those offences are clear, proportionate and workable. As we've noted, the bill's been referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, a very important committee, for its report by 2 October. There are important issues that the government needs to explain through that committee process before we can finalise our position in the other place.

Debate adjourned. Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.