Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill 2026
Ms BERRY (Whitlam) (12:23): Sport is a part of the essential fabric of our society. It's part of our heritage, part of our culture and part of what makes our nation great. Around the world, we are known for our sporting achievements, punching far above our weight and achieving success across the board.
At both the summer and winter Olympics, World Cups, world championships and international and local competitions, we compete, we're competitive, and a lot of the time we win. Yes, the Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill 2026 is about sport, but it's about much more than just sport. It's about fairness.
It's about trust. It's about honesty. It's about protecting Australian athletes from exploitation.
It's about ensuring that organised crime cannot buy its way into our sporting competitions. And, fundamentally, it's about protecting something that Australians rightly believe belongs to all of us: the integrity, unpredictability and excitement of sport. For generations, Australians have grown up with sport as part of the fabric of our national life.
We play it, we watch it, we coach it, and we volunteer at it. We cook the barbecue on the weekends. We shout in support from the sidelines.
We take our children to weekend games, and we cheer them when we win. Sometimes we lose, but we always play our hardest. Every week in my electorate of Whitlam, people enter the field, pitch, court, pool or track and compete with honesty, integrity and fairness.
Sport gives young people a place to belong. It teaches teamwork, discipline, resilience and respect. It gives children the opportunity to make friends, challenge themselves and learn that sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, but you can always have a team around you.
And, when you're playing an individual sport, resilience is the strongest form of fitness. We see that spirit right across my electorate of Whitlam, where there are organisations in my community that are much more than sporting clubs. They are community institutions.
There are the parents washing the jerseys on Sunday night, the coach giving up their Saturday morning, the volunteer running the canteen and the person marking the lines, preparing the ground or putting away the equipment after everyone else has gone home. The Albanese Labor government believes that when two teams walk out onto a field, a court, a truck or a pitch, the outcome should be determined by what happens in the contest, not by a criminal syndicate, not by a corrupt official, not by a bookmaker seeking an advantage and not by somebody sitting thousands of kilometres away sending instructions to an athlete who may be vulnerable to pressure or exploitation.
Fairness, integrity, honesty, community and our social fabric—these are the principles at the heart of this bill. Sport in Australia provides $83 billion in combined economic, health and educational benefits each year and makes a vital contribution towards our national identity. Match fixing has become increasingly linked to organised crime due to the potential financial benefits, and the new offences within this bill will help target those attempting to corrupt Australian sport for financial gain.
At present, our criminal law is uneven across jurisdictions. Some states and territories have specific offences. Others rely on general fraud provisions.
Some offences are closely connected to betting, and others are not. That inconsistency creates gaps, and where there are gaps in the law, there are opportunities for people who are determined to exploit them. This bill works to fill those gaps by establishing a national framework with seven new Commonwealth offences that aim to eliminate corruption from Australian sport and protect its integrity from the threat of match fixing and related harms.
The offences are formulated to apply nationally, within Australia, as well as outside Australia in certain circumstances. This recognises that, due to the global nature of sports, integrity threats have increasingly become international. The offences contained in the bill will work alongside existing state and territory laws, with the aim of ensuring that sport is protected from a range of conduct that occurs both here and abroad.
Implementation of these offences will make Australia compliant with the Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, supporting an effective global response to international sport integrity matters. These offences are not designed to impede or affect the types of matters that sporting organisations currently investigate, which are currently addressed through the National Platform for Information Sharing, under the responsibility of Sports Integrity Australia.
The national platform enables intelligence sharing and coordinated action between sporting organisations, wagering service providers, law enforcement and regulators both domestic and international. Sport Integrity Australia's role will not change with the introduction of the new national sport integrity offences. The agency will continue to fulfil its role as Australia's national platform in the fight against the manipulation of sporting competitions.
As the national platform, Sport Integrity Australia sits at the heart of Australia's response to match fixing. It provides a central point for the collection, analysis and sharing of intelligence and information that can help detect, disrupt and prevent attempts to manipulate sport. The introduction of these new offences represents an important step forward in protecting the integrity of Australian sport.
By strengthening and creating greater consistency across Commonwealth, state and territory laws, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors will be better equipped to investigate and prosecute those who seek to corrupt sporting competitions for their own gain. The AFP will have a role in investigating offences that fall within the Commonwealth's jurisdiction and those involving a multijurisdictional element.
However, responsibility for tackling match fixing will not sit solely with the AFP. It will remain a shared effort, with law enforcement agencies across Australia playing their part in protecting the sport that Australians love. Ultimately, these reforms are about more than creating new offences.
They're about sending a clear message: Australian sport is not open for exploitation. Manipulation and match fixing threaten the trust, fairness and integrity that sits at the heart of sport. By strengthening our laws and our collective response, we can make Australia a harder target for criminal infiltration and help ensure that athletes, fans and communities can continue to have confidence that sporting contests are decided on the field, not behind closed doors.
This legislation also complements the government's broader gambling reforms, reinforcing a united commitment to protecting the integrity of Australian sport and reducing its appeal to those who would seek to exploit it for criminal purposes. The bill introduces several offences that aim to rid our sports of unwanted and unfair practices that cripple the foundation of fairness in sport.
First is an offence that prohibits engaging in conduct that would or would be likely to corrupt a sporting event with the intention of obtaining a benefit or avoiding or causing a detriment that would not otherwise be due because of participation in the sporting event. This would capture a circumstance such as a football player intentionally getting a yellow card to obtain payment from a third party.
This offence would attract penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment for individuals or a fine of 100,000 penalty units for bodies corporate. Second is an offence that prohibits inducing the corruption of sporting events by providing a benefit to another person or related behaviours and be reckless as to whether that conduct would tend to influence a person to engage in conduct that corrupts a sporting event.
This would capture a circumstance such as an organised crime member providing a payment to an athlete to ensure the athlete's team loses their next match. This offence would attract penalties of up to five years imprisonment for individuals or a fine of 50,000 penalty units for bodies corporate. Third is an offence that prohibits asking for, receiving or obtaining or agreeing to receive or obtain a benefit and be reckless as to whether this would tend to influence the person to engage in conduct that corrupts a sporting event.
This would capture a circumstance such as an athlete asking another person for a payment to lose their next match. This offence would attract penalties of up to five years imprisonment for individuals or a fine of 50,000 penalty units for bodies corporate. Fourth is an offence prohibiting, altering, destroying or concealing information about the corruption of a sporting event where doing so facilitates, conceals or disguises obtaining a benefit, or avoiding or causing a detriment.
This would capture a circumstance such as player A messaging player B, saying player A will deliberately miss goals in their next football match in exchange for a free holiday, and then player A and B both deleting those messages. This offence would attract penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment for individuals or 100,000 penalty units for bodies corporate.
Fifth is an offence prohibiting the use or communication of information about conduct that corrupts a sporting event with the intention of improperly obtaining a benefit for, or avoiding or causing a detriment to, a person. Previously, where a player has been prosecuted under state offences for their part in match fixing, those who profited from their knowledge of the fix could not be prosecuted.
This offence will enable prosecution of those who, for example, place bets on their knowledge of the corrupted sporting event. This would attract significant penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment for individuals or a fine of 100,000 penalty units for bodies corporate. Sixth is an offence to prohibit the possession of information about conduct that corrupts a sporting event where that possession is for the purposes of improperly using or communicating that information.
This would capture a circumstance such as where player A plans to deliberately give away free kicks to opposition player B to give player B more shots at goal, player A texts their friend with details of the plan and the friend looks up odds on player B kicking multiple goals during the game. This would attract penalties of up to three years imprisonment for individuals or a fine of 35,000 penalty units for bodies corporate.
Lastly, the bill introduces an offence to prohibit the improper use or communication of inside information. This would capture circumstances where a player tells friends they will plan an attack rather than defence in an upcoming match, and the friends use that information to bet on that player to be the first goalscorer. This offence would attract penalties of up to three years imprisonment for individuals or a fine of 35,000 penalty units for bodies corporate.
These offences send a clear message: sport is not for sale. They target the people who corrupt competitions, those who bribe or pressure others to do so and those who profit from knowing a fix is in place. The offences cover deliberately manipulating a sporting event for financial gain, offering or seeking payments to influence an outcome and concealing evidence of corruption.
They also ensure that those who use or communicate information about a sporting fix can be held to account. Importantly, the offences also address the misuse of inside information, closing a loophole that has allowed people to profit from information that other competitors and fans do not have. Penalties are deliberately serious, reflecting the seriousness of the conduct, with individuals facing up to 10 years imprisonment for the most serious offences.
Sport is woven into the fabric of Australian life. It brings us together in moments of triumph, heartbreak, pride and celebration. From local club and weekend competitions to the world's biggest sporting stages, sport creates a sense of belonging and gives Australians something to share regardless of age, background or circumstances.
It reflects the Australian values we hold dear—fairness, courage, resilience, respect and giving everyone a genuine chance to compete. When Australians watch and play sport, they trust that the contest is real and that the result is earned. Protecting that trust means protecting an important part of who we are as a nation.