Sport Legislation Amendment (World Anti-Doping Code Implementation) Bill 2026

Ms AMBIHAIPAHAR (Barton) (18:39): I rise to speak on the Sport Legislation Amendment (World Anti-Doping Code Implementation) Bill 2026. Some moments get etched into a nation's memory, and, for so many Australians, one of them happened on a warm Sydney night in 2000 when Cathy Freeman stepped onto the track of the stadium at Olympic Park. There were thousands of people in that stadium and what felt like the entire country holding its breath at home.

I think many in this chamber can probably remember where they were standing that night, who they were squashed on the couch with and the sound that rose when she crossed the line. That was the Sydney Olympics, and they were the games that I think made us feel, all at once, that we could welcome the world and do it with a grin. What I remember most is not only the gold but also the trust.

We watched believing that what we were seeing was fair and that the person who won that night was the person who earnt it. That is what this bill is about. In the electorate of Barton, sport not only happens on television; it happens on Saturday mornings.

It is in the whistle blown at Arncliffe Park and in the chilly sideline coffee. It is in the netballers of the St George District Netball Association, putting on their bibs in Rockdale. It's in the b-ball players from St George basketball team, warming up at the stadium at Hurstville Aquatic Leisure Centre.

It is in the St George Illawarra Dragons, whose heartland runs right through Kogarah and every kid in a Dragons jersey who is sure they will be the next one to run out at Jubilee Stadium. It is in the soccer families of Rockdale Ilinden who give up their weekends to the game and training. It is in the community who shows up at Hurstville Oval to support the St George District Cricket Club regardless of the weather.

That is what we do in Barton and, I think, across the country. I also want to give a quick shout-out to Football St George, to its committee members and to the teams that have made the grand final in the Champion of Champions competition, which include the Banksia Tigers under-15s, the Minotaurs under-13s, the Ilinden under-16s, the Dolls Point over-35s, the Minotaurs under-45s and Arncliffe Aurora.

When you walk those fields and courts, you will meet modern Australia right there. You'll hear Greeks. You'll hear Macedonians.

You'll hear Cantonese, Mandarin, Nepali and even Arabic, all shouted with equal passion from the sidelines. You'll see parents who finished a night shift and came straight to the game. You'll see grandparents as well.

They may never have quite understood the offside rule, but they are cheering anyway. And, somewhere on those sidelines, I guarantee you there'll be a kid from Kingsgrove or Bexley or Carlton who's really quietly doing the maths on a dream. Maybe it's Los Angeles 2028.

Maybe it's Brisbane 2032. That kid is not asking for special treatment; they are asking for one thing: a fair go. They want to know that the contest is clean, the rules are the same for everyone and the system protecting them is independent and trustworthy.

Before I came into this place, I spent about a decade working as an employment and industrial relations lawyer, standing up in the Fair Work Commission and also the Federal Circuit Court, representing workers and representing businesses as well. What I learnt is that people can accept almost any outcome if they believe the process was fair. They cannot accept a process where the person who makes the decisions is also a person with a stake in the results of those decision.

Hold onto that thought and let it sit with you, but that is at the core of this bill. Australia has long been proud to be a leader in clean sport. We established the Australian Sports Drug Agency in 1990, before the World Anti-Doping Agency existed and before the World Anti-Doping Code was actually written.

We became a signatory to the UNESCO antidoping convention in 2005, and we have been compliant with the code since it began on 1 January 2004. Today we have a seat at the table, with Australia serving as the Oceania representative on the WADA Executive Committee, and Sport Integrity Australia delivers a national program that covers education, testing, intelligence and investigations.

This matters because cheating does not care about borders. International investigations into Russian sports found institutional involvement in doping, including the manipulation of samples and interference with the antidoping process. It has been demonstrated to us that sophisticated doping networks can involve medical and sport personnel operating across different sports and different countries.

The athletes who pay the price are the clean ones—the ones who trained harder, went to sleep earlier and said no. No one country and no one sport can deal with that alone. That is why the code is reviewed and strengthened every six years—2009, 2015 and 2021—and why a revised code will commence on 1 January 2027.

It was developed through a two-year global review in which governments, athletes, anti-doping organisations and sporting bodies all had their say. Australia was at the table at every stage and we consulted athletes, the National Sports Tribunal, the Australian Sports Drug Medical Advisory Committee, the Australian Sports Commission and our national sporting organisations along the way.

This bill is how Australia gets ready. It makes targeted changes to the Sport Integrity Australia Act 2020 and the National Sports Tribunal Act 2019. I want to take the House through four of them.

Firstly, the bill strengthens athletes' appeal rights on therapeutic-use exemptions. Sometimes an athlete has a legitimate medical need for a substance that would otherwise be prohibited. Think of an athlete managing a serious illness who is entitled to treatment like anyone else.

In Australia, the Australian Sports Drug Medical Advisory Committee decides on those applications. Right now, if an application is refused, the review happens within the committee's own statutory structure. This bill sends eligible refusals to the National Sports Tribunal instead.

The committee keeps making the original decision, but an independent specialist body reviews it. As a lawyer, that makes me nod. The original decision-maker should never be the final word on its own decisions.

Secondly, the bill reinforces the independence of the system itself. At the moment, Sport Integrity Australia investigates and asserts a potential violation, but it is the sporting organisations that imposes the provisional suspension and the consequences. The 2027 code says that an anti-doping organisation must not hand parts of that process to a national sporting body.

So this bill moves responsibility for imposing provisional suspensions and agreed consequences to Sports Integrity Australia, while sporting organisations remain responsible for putting those decisions into effect within their sport. It removes a potential conflict of interest and it protects the athlete, the sport and the public's confidence in the outcome. Thirdly, the bill gets the balance right on publication.

Sport Integrity Australia keeps a public violation list, and transparency matters. But we are also talking about real people and sometimes very young ones. The bill introduces stronger privacy protections where a person establishes no fault or negligence.

For minors, for people who lack the capacity to understand the rules and for recreational athletes, the CEO must weigh the person's best interests alongside the public interest before deciding whether to publish it. A young person should not really carry a reputational cost for life because of a decision made in a moment of confusion or maybe even poor judgement or advice.

That is proportionate and it is fair. Fourthly, the bill modernises the definition of an athlete. It removes a domestic provision that treated a person as an athlete for six months after they last competed, a rule that is not part of the international definition and not required by the code.

It also recognises WADA's technical letters, as well as technical documents, within the definition of international standards. These are sensible changes that keep our laws in step with the world's. The detailed rules will follow through amendments to the Sport Integrity Australia regulations, including the national anti-doping scheme, and through the 2027 Australian national anti-doping policy adopted by the national sporting organisations.

Together, these instruments make up the full Australian framework we need in place by 1 January 2027. Compliance with the 2027 code is required for Australia to actually take part in world championships and other international federation competitions run under code-compliant rules. It's required for Australia to host major sporting events, such as the 2027 Australian Open, the Santos Tour Down Under and the Big Bash League.

If we miss these deadlines, we'll put at risk the events that fill our stadiums, our hotels and our local economies. The government is backing this with real investment. The 2026-27 budget provides $20.1 million to continue Sport Integrity Australia's role as our national anti-doping organisation and the coordinating agency for integrity in Australian sport.

There is a further $8.5 million to keep the Australian Sport Drug Testing Laboratory operating as a primary WADA accredited facility. That builds on that $36.3 million announced in January 2024 to tackle abuse, bullying, racism, discrimination and sexual misconduct in sport. And there is a further $37 million in operating funding over the two years from 1 July 2024.

Integrity in sport means more than catching cheats; it means making sure every child who walks onto a field is safe and very much respected. We are backing our athletes. The 2026-27 budget delivers a record $406 million investment in sport, including $307.4 million over two years for high performance.

That includes $207.8 million—and this is important—in grants and national sporting organisations, $58 million to lift Paralympic sport and address the barriers its athletes face, $18.6 million for direct athlete support and $23 million for the Women Leaders in Sport program and the delivery of grants. This is how we prepare for Los Angeles 2028 and Brisbane 2032.

I was about 12 or 13 years old when we had the Sydney Olympics. Reflecting on that, we'll have the Olympics in Brisbane in 2032. It feels like a bookend.

In the first, a generation of Australians learnt what it felt like to believe in something together. In the second, in 2032, a new generation will get its turn. Between them, I believe it's our job to protect the thing that made the first one so special—the belief that the contest was real and the win was earnt.

Here's my hope: some night in 2032, a kid who grew up kicking a ball in Arncliffe Park or shooting hoops with St George Basketball in Hurstville will step onto the biggest stage in the world. Somewhere in Barton, a whole street will be crammed together around a television, shouting at a screen, and everyone in that room, from the kids to the grandparents, will know in their hearts that that particular game was fair.

That is what this bill is about.