Australian Parliament agrees legislation to create Tribunal to handle doping and integrity breaches

The Australian Parliament has passed legislation to set up a new sports integrity body, the National Sports Tribunal, on a two-year trial basis.

The organisation’s powers will include resolving doping allegations, mediating team selection disputes and dealing with integrity breaches. The tribunal will be separated into three divisions: an anti-doping division, a general division and an appeals division.

Federal Sport Minister Richard Colbeck said Australia’s current integrity mechanisms, under which sports generally investigate and handle disputes internally, lag behind countries like the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Japan, advising “they are inconsistent, subject to accusations of bias and lack powers to get to the truth.”

Senator Colbeck added that the new Tribunal would reduce the high costs and long resolution times that currently plague sports disputes.

The creation of the Tribunal is based on a recommendation by the Federal Government-commissioned Wood Review of Australia’s Sports Integrity Arrangements which published its final report and recommendations in August last year.

An earlier draft bill to create a tribunal was proposed in February this year, but was dropped after resistance from the AFL, Cricket Australia and other major sporting bodies.

Question marks remain over whether the tribunal will be opt-in, meaning that sports bodies could still use their own integrity processes.

This was what was proposed in the dropped February bill. Richard Ings, the former Chief Executive of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Agency, said in February that the opt-in model would render any tribunal ineffective, noting “if it’s an opt-in model then it’s dead on arrival.”