Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill 2026

Ms JARRETT (Brisbane) (13:06): Australia is a sporting nation—we all know that—and sport is part of who we are. It might be a Saturday morning and we're standing at the edge of the footy field watching our kids play, or we might be at the local swimming pool, or we might be at the cricket pitch; Sports is Australia. It's also about sitting around that television and watching that sport.

Maybe, it means watching the Matildas, the Socceroos, the Ashes, the Australian Open, the State of Origin, the AFL or the NRL grand finals, which are coming up soon. In just a few years, the eyes of the world will turn to Brisbane, my electorate, where we will be hosting the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic games. But there is something fundamental that makes sport work—we have to believe that it's fair.

When two teams walk onto a field, when two players walk onto a court, when athletes line up behind that starting line, Australians expect that what happens next will be decided by their skill, by their preparation, by their courage and maybe even by a little bit of luck. What we cannot accept is the possibility that the result has already been decided somewhere else, not on the field but through corruption, through bribery, through organised crime, through the misuse of inside information or maybe even through match fixing.

That's why this Albanese Labor government has introduced these important reforms. This legislation sends a very simple message: Australian sport is not for sale, and those who deliberately corrupt it should face serious consequences. For many Australians, the term 'match fixing' probably conjures up a fairly simple image—somebody paying an athlete to deliberately lose a match.

But modern sports corruption can be much more sophisticated than that. It might involve manipulating one particular moment in a game. It might involve a player deliberately committing a certain infringement.

It might involve somebody influencing an athlete, a coach or an official. It might involve information about a planned manipulation being secretly passed from one person to another. And, increasingly, these activities can involve international criminal networks operating across national borders.

The Albanese government has warned that match fixing can provide a foothold for transnational criminal organisations who manipulate sports outcomes, launder money and exploit vulnerable people involved in sport. That changes the way we need to think about sports integrity. It isn't simply about someone breaking the rules of a sporting competition; at its most serious, it really is organised criminal activity.

And criminal activity requires criminal justice. It requires a criminal justice response. The legislation therefore proposes seven new Commonwealth criminal offences.

They cover corrupting a sporting event. They cover inducing another person to corrupt a sporting event. They cover soliciting corruption.

They cover altering, destroying or concealing information about corrupt conduct. They cover improperly using or communicating information about corrupt conduct. They cover possessing information with the intention of improperly using that information or communicating it.

And importantly, they also cover the improper use or communication of inside information relating to sporting events. Together, these offences are designed to attack the problem from multiple dimensions. Because, if we are serious about stopping corruption, we cannot simply punish the person who might ultimately manipulate the contest.

We have to target the network around them. For the most serious conduct the legislation provides for penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment. That's significant, and it should be so, because deliberately corrupting a sporting competition for personal benefit, it's not okay.

It's not a harmless shortcut. There can be victims. There can be athletes whose careers are damaged.

There are sporting clubs whose reputations can be destroyed. There are supporters who've spent their hard-earned money attending an event they believe to be genuine. There can be sponsors and other organisations that suffer financial losses, and, ultimately, there can be enormous damage to public confidence in sport.

There is another important feature of this legislation that also deserves attention. The offences are generally not limited to corruption connected with betting, and that distinction matters because sports can be corrupted for reasons other than gambling. Someone might manipulate a sporting event to influence a tournament outcome to benefit another team, to obtain some financial advantage or other advantage, or because the pressure of inducement completely unrelated to a conventional wager.

The principle behind this legislation is therefore broader. The thing we are protecting is not really the integrity of the betting market that might be associated with sport. We are protecting the integrity of competition itself, and we are protecting that wonderful uncertainty that makes sport worth watching.

Think about the thousands that will be watching Brisbane versus Adelaide at the Gabba this weekend at the field, or maybe even on the television. Maybe think about why millions of Australians will watch the NRL grand final in a few weeks' time. We watch because we don't know what's going to happen.

Think about the thousands of people that sit at a stadium until the final siren goes off. They do this because the result is still uncertain, and, of course, we really want our team to win. But that unpredictability is the magic of sport.

Take that away, and eventually you take away the reason people care. A sporting competition where the outcome is secretly manipulated isn't competition at all. It's theatre.

It's theatre pretending to be sport. Australians deserve better than that. Australia has long recognised the need for stronger and more consistent national laws to combat match fixing and sports corruption.

The 2018 Wood review found that integrity threats to Australian sport, including organised criminal involvement, were real and were increasing. The review recommended creating national match fixing offences and stronger national mechanisms to address sports corruption. This legislation delivers on that recommendation.

It establishes a national response to a problem that extends beyond state and territory borders. Sports corruption is increasingly international, also in nature, with criminal syndicates, betting networks, individuals operating across multiple jurisdictions and countries. Those seeking to manipulate Australian sporting events may be located overseas, making a coordinated national framework essential.

The legislation also supports Australia's commitment to the Macolin Convention, an international treaty aimed at preventing the manipulation of sporting competitions. International cooperation is critical because the money, the information, the betting markets and the criminal networks move across borders, and they can do so rapidly. By strengthening domestic laws and aligning these with international efforts, Australia will be better equipped to work with global partners and protect Australian sport from both domestic and overseas criminal threats.

That becomes particularly important as Australia prepares for an extraordinary decade of international sport. We are going to host some of the world's biggest sporting events here in Australia: there's the men's Rugby World Cup next year; there's the Women's Rugby World Cup in 2029; there's the Para Cycling Road World Cup in 2028; and of course, in 2032, Brisbane will host the Olympics and Paralympic Games—for Queenslanders in particular, that's something incredibly exciting.

But hosting major sporting events also brings responsibility. When athletes from around the world come to our great country, they should know that we are taking sporting integrity seriously. When international organisations hold competitions here, they should know that Australia has strong institutions and strong laws protecting those competitions.

And when Australians buy a ticket and walk through that gate, they should be able to trust what they are watching. There's another group that this legislation is designed to protect—the athletes themselves. When we talk about match-fixing, it might be easy to think that athletes can simply choose to participate in corruption, but the reality can be far more complicated.

Athletes can be targeted and manipulated, and sometimes the most vulnerable may be people at the beginning of their careers, people earning relatively modest incomes or participants who don't have support structures surrounding their professional endeavours. Organised criminals deliberately look for vulnerabilities. That's why a strong integrity system cannot simply say to athletes, 'Don't do the wrong thing.' We need prevention, we need education and we need reporting mechanisms.

We need sporting organisations capable of identifying suspicious behaviour, and where criminal conduct occurs we need laws that are strong enough to respond. The Commonwealth offences proposed by this bill sit within a broader integrity framework. Sport Integrity Australia already works with sporting organisations through the National Integrity Framework, covering areas including competition manipulation and sports betting.

This legislation adds another important layer because sporting sanctions and criminal sanctions serve two different purposes. A sporting organisation might suspend an athlete, might ban someone or might impose disciplinary penalties. But when that conduct crosses the line into serious corruption or criminal activity, Australia needs the capacity to say, 'This isn't simply against the rules; it's against the laws of Australia.' There is something distinctly Australian about the principle behind the legislation.

Australians have always had that strong sense of fairness. We don't expect everyone to win; sport teaches us the exact opposite. Sometimes you can train incredibly hard and you lose, sometimes the other team is just better, sometimes the ball bounces the wrong way or sometimes the referee makes that decision you might disagree with.

That's sport, right? But Australians cannot tolerate the idea that the contest itself was dishonest and manipulated, if somebody behind the scenes bought the outcome. Fairness doesn't mean everybody gets the same result; fairness means everyone gets a genuine contest.

That principle goes well beyond sport. It reflects something Labor has always believed: rules should apply fairly. Power shouldn't simply belong to whoever has the deepest pockets.

People should not be able to buy outcomes that everyone else is expected to compete honestly for. Institutions that Australians trust should be protected from corruption. We should also remember the enormous contribution sport makes to this country.

It contributes to the economy. It creates jobs. It brings tourists to our cities and towns.

It improves physical and mental wellbeing. It gives children confidence. It creates friendships.

It gives communities something to rally around. Perhaps most importantly, sport connects people who may otherwise have very little in common—different backgrounds, different religions, different cultures, different politics. But you put them in the same grandstand with the same coloured shirt, and, suddenly, they're all on the same side.

That is powerful, and that is worth protecting. In a few years time, as I mentioned, Brisbane will welcome the world. Children who are currently kicking footballs around suburban parks and streets or diving into local swimming pools will be watching the best athletes in the world compete in my home city—and some of those children may even be the athletes that are competing.

When they stand on that starting line, step onto that field or dive into that pool, they deserve something very simple: a fair contest—nothing more, nothing less. That is ultimately what this legislation is about. It's about protecting the athlete who's trained honestly, protecting the supporter who bought the ticket, protecting the club built by generations of volunteers, protecting the reputation of Australian sport and protecting the simple belief that, when Australians watch a sporting contest, what happens on the field is real.

Sports should be unpredictable. It should be competitive. It should be exciting.

Above all else, sports should be fair. Our athletes are not commodities to be exploited. Our competitions are not opportunities for organised crime.

And Australian sport is not for sale.