Independent Review – Department of Health
On 14 February 2019, the Government introduced the following legislation:
- The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Amendment (Enhancing Australia’s Anti‑Doping Capability) Bill 2019 to amend the existing anti-doping, freedom of information and privacy laws to ensure the efficient and effective implementation of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority’s (ASADA’s) regulatory functions.
- The National Sports Tribunal Bill 2019 and the National Sports Tribunal (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019 to establish a Tribunal to ensure the Australian community has access to cost effective, transparent, timely and independent sports dispute resolution.
The Bills form part of the Government’s response to the Review of Australia’s Sports Integrity Arrangements Safeguarding the Integrity of Sport (the Wood Review). The Wood Review made 52 recommendations to help safeguard the integrity of Australian sport, combating present, emerging and future threats from doping, match-fixing, illegal betting, organised crime and corruption.
The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Amendment (Enhancing Australia’s Anti‑Doping Capability) Bill 2019 will:
- extend statutory protection against civil actions to national sporting organisations and their staff in the exercise of anti-doping rule violation functions;
- extend the protection that allows an entrusted person to resist production of protected information to a court or tribunal to any person in possession of protected information;
- change the statutory threshold at which the ASADA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) may issue a disclosure notice from 'reasonably believes' (that a person has information, documents or things that may be relevant to administration of the national anti-doping scheme) to 'reasonably suspects';
- allow a person entitled to inspect or view a document produced pursuant to a disclosure notice to do so only at such times and places as the CEO thinks appropriate;
- increase the penalty for non-compliance; and
- provide that a person is not excused from complying with the requirement to answer a question, give information or provide a document or thing on the grounds that doing so may incriminate them or expose them to a penalty.
The National Sports Tribunal Bill 2019 and the National Sports Tribunal (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019 will establish the National Sports Tribunal, with an Anti-Doping Division, a General Division and an Appeals Division.
The Department of Health certified the Wood Review as a process and analysis equivalent to a Regulation Impact Statement. The OBPR does not assess the adequacy of independent reviews. The OBPR agreed with the Department’s estimate that reforms made in response to the Wood Review will result in a net reduction in regulatory burden of $417,000 per annum.