Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill 2026
Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (12:37): Sport occupies a unique and powerful place in Australian life. It brings people together, creates a sense of belonging and gives expression to values that so many of us hold dear—hard work, teamwork, excellence and fair play. In the Kooyong electorate, sport is woven into the fabric of community life.
Every weekend, thousands of people—my family members and myself included—participate in local sporting competitions. We volunteer at clubs, we cheer from the sidelines and we connect with our friends, our family and our community through sport. For many families in Victoria and beyond, the AFL is far more than a game; it is our game, a cultural institution.
It's a source of identity. It's a bridge between generations. One of the most important features of sport, whether it be a professional competition watched by millions or a local get-together played for the love of the game, for fitness and for fun, is that the conduct of sport is undertaken with integrity.
Players, coaches, supporters, administrators and commercial partners must have confidence that results are always determined by skill, effort and fair competition, not by corruption or criminal manipulation. The government's bill, the Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill 2026, seeks to strengthen Australia's framework for protecting that integrity in sport—and there's much in it which deserves support.
The legislation gives effect to key recommendations arising from the 2018 Wood review of Australia's sports integrity arrangements, including the application of criminal penalties as a strong deterrent to match-fixing and corruption in sport. It also takes steps to align Australia's domestic laws with the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, known as the Macolin convention, which the Australian government signed in 2019.
These are appropriate reforms, as is the introduction of a nationally consistent legal framework across Australian jurisdictions for the criminalisation of conduct which disrupts the integrity of sporting competitions. Match fixing doesn't stop at state borders and nor should our response to it. Coherent national laws which provide greater certainty for law enforcement agencies, sporting organisations and athletes will improve everyone's confidence in what they're watching.
They'll strengthen Australia's capacity to cooperate internationally in addressing threats to sporting integrity. They'll improve the integrity of our major sporting competitions, including those events which put us under an international spotlight, such as the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic games, the Men's Rugby World Cup and the Netball World Cup to be held here next year.
I support these legislative measures, but it's difficult to consider this legislation without also reflecting on who stands to benefit from it most. One obvious beneficiary of stronger protections against match fixing is the gambling industry. Sports-betting companies depend on public confidence in sporting competitions.
Their business model relies not just on the vulnerability of millions of Australians who gamble every year, losing in excess of $30 billion in the process; it also relies on social licence and the credibility of sporting competitions. When a result is manipulated, betting operators may face significant financial losses, and confidence in the products that they market so aggressively to so many of our young people could be damaged.
That reality poses the awkward question: why is this legislation in front of this parliament now? Australian governments agreed to the national policy on match fixing in sport more than 15 years ago. The Wood review was released more than eight years ago.
Australia signed the Macolin convention seven years ago. It's been a very long time since we had a betting scandal of the sort of the Fine Cotton affair, but this legislation was introduced to parliament one day after the Labor and Liberal parties conspired to pass the government's weak, disappointing gambling regulations, reforms which were meant to reduce Australians' exposure to harmful gambling advertising but which will not do so.
If the government is genuinely really concerned with promoting integrity in Australian sport, then we should be looking beyond protecting sporting outcomes from criminal interference. Integrity also requires transparency about the financial relationships between the major sporting organisations that we value and the gambling industry. Australians deserve to know the extent to which our professional sporting competitions receive income from financial relationships with betting companies, a predatory industry whose business model depends on profiting from the supporter bases of those sporting codes.
During the recent debate on gambling reform, I argued that greater transparency is needed around the commercial arrangements between professional sporting organisations and gambling companies. At present, we have limited public visibility over these arrangements, despite Australia's two largest sporting codes—the AFL and the NRL—receiving an estimated $80 million a year in tax-free income from the gambling industry.
Australians rightly expect integrity from athletes, coaches and officials, but they also expect greater levels of transparency and accountability from the organisations that actually govern professional sport. This bill deals with one important dimension of sporting integrity—the prevention of match fixing, the prevention of corruption and criminal manipulation of sporting contests.
Those reforms are fine. Aligning Commonwealth law with our international commitments and improving consistency across jurisdictions will strengthen the integrity framework of sporting competitions. It will increase confidence in those much-loved sporting competitions.
But, if we're actually serious about integrity in sport, we should be prepared to examine all factors that influence it, including the growing commercial dependence of professional sporting organisations in Australia on gambling revenue. Sport is one of Australia's great social institutions. It deserves strong and consistent protection against corruption in all of its forms.
So, for those reasons, I support this bill. But, in doing so, I also encourage the government to pursue a broader agenda on integrity in Australian sport, one that encompasses not only criminal conduct on the field but also the financial relationships that are shaping the sporting landscape in homes and communities across the country.