The Australian Crime Commission's recent report on drugs in sport is significantly deficient in what it says and doesn't say, has been badly handled by the government and the commission, and raises concerns about the nature of some of the commission's powers.
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It's full of vague allegations - ''widespread use of PIEDs [performance and image-enhancing drugs] has been identified or is suspected'', ''multiple players … are suspected of currently using … peptides'', ''it is suspected that peptides are being administered'', ''some medical practitioners … appear to be primary prescribers of various peptides'', ''information provided to the ACC suggests'', ''no party appeared to be maintaining comprehensive medical records'' and so on and on and on.
There's a lot of assertion and not much evidence. The woman on the omnibus to the Melbourne Cricket Ground has been given no grounds on which to judge whether the commission's claims about the ''widespread'' use of PIEDs are reasonable. No names, just a few numbers would have been nice. After a year-long investigation, surely some statistics could be divulged. How many players, coaches, clubs and officials are suspected, how many medical practitioners were found to be prescribing PIEDs, how many ''anti-ageing clinics'' are ''marketing their services directly to athletes'' and so on? In withholding that information, the commission tarnishes all but creates suspicion that its claims lack a solid foundation.
As former Sydney Swans coach Paul Roos has said, the commission ''has made a blanket statement. I would like to have heard: 'Look we have 35 examples across four codes. We're not going to give any details of names clearly because we're still investigating.' Obviously, there must be some logic behind what they did but certainly it throws everyone into the pot.''
What might count for evidence in the commission's report is paltry, selective or hard to match against other straws in the wind. For example:
- The report includes three ''case studies''. One deals with bans imposed by the Australian Rugby Union on two players in a state competition for possession involving 10 five-milligram vials of a substance known as GHRP-6. The second case study is not a case study and the third is a United States one.
- The commission says a 2012 University of NSW needle and syringe study ''reported that while relatively small proportions of respondents reported last injecting PIEDs, a significant increase in prevalence occurred over the period 2007 to 2011''. It would have been helpful to add that the proportion increased from 1 to 5 per cent over the five-year period and that the median age of the sample was 37 - that is, more than half were well beyond their elite sporting days and the vast majority of the new injectors of PIEDs may well have been vain souls in search of the mixed blessings of eternal youth.
- In 2011, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that the use of steroids for non-medical reasons had declined from 0.3 per cent of its assessed illicit drug use in 1993 to 0.1 per cent in 2010.
- In its 2011-12 annual report, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority said that during that year it conducted 7196 doping tests. As a consequence, it entered 33 athletes' names into its register of findings, a significant decrease over the previous year. Of these, eight were bodybuilders and there were 15 instances involving anabolic agents, peptide hormones and similar substances.
- The AFL's deputy chief executive, Gillon McLachlan, has said the AFL was aware of only two ''possible'' performance-enhancing cases: one involving a number of players at one club and the second an unnamed player at another club.
In the absence of indicative statistical material on the Australian Crime Commission's investigation, there's room to suspect that the problem of PIEDs in sport might not be as ''widespread'' as it alleges. And its case is not helped when on several occasions it gratuitously drags the distracting dead cat of the Lance Armstrong case across the trail. Why not rope in Ben Johnson, Alberto Contador and Marion Jones as well? They're just as irrelevant.
The report also contains its fair share of non sequiturs. For example, it says: ''The standard of competition at the elite level of sport has reached the point where winning margins are measured in hundredths of a second.'' The measurement of winning margins has nothing to do with the standard of competition; it's simply enabled by modern timing technology that would have been used by the Greeks at Olympia 2800 years ago had it been available. The commission's claim that ''integrity management in professional sport is only as strong as the weakest link across the broad sports industry'' is simply self-evident nonsense. If the Tasmanian cricket team were to be a weak link (an unlikelihood), that need not have the slightest effect on the Canberra Capitals basketballers.
And the commission has had some curious changes of mind. In its 2011 report on organised crime, it said ''the risk trajectory for this market [in PIEDs] is stable'' and ''the ready availability of these drugs reduces opportunities for organised crime groups to control or have significant influence in this market''. A little over a year later, the commission implies that the ''risk trajectory'' may well be going through the roof and it says ''organised crime groups are active in the trafficking of PIEDs that are being used by elite athletes in Australia''.
But let's turn to the way the report has been handled by the government and the commission.
The chiefs of the major sporting codes are given ''confidential and classified'' briefings on January 31. On February 7, they're hauled before a seething news conference and made to look like dills or something more sinister presiding of over ''widespread'' cheating and associating with criminals. The ''media'' goes nuts. No hyperbole is too excessive. It's ''the blackest day in the history of Australian sport'' and ''Australia's squeaky clean sports reputation is in tatters amid revelations of organised crime, drugs and match-fixing''. It's as if journos and sub-editors have been tucking into hallucinogenic substances.
And what are the government and the crime commission up to? According to the Justice Minister, Jason Clare, they think they will ''prevent this from getting any worse … put the frighteners on organised criminals … to encourage people to put their hands up''. Can he be serious? Clare may well have a future in federal politics but he will not be able to count this as one of his finest hours.
The coach of the North Queensland rugby league team, Neil Henry, said it was embarrassing for his club to need to defend itself against unknown allegations and ''it's a shame that we've had to go into this defensive mode that we know nothing about''.
Newcastle Knights coach Wayne Bennett said: ''We don't know what they want us to confess to.''
The president of the World Anti-Doping Authority, Australia's own John Fahey, criticised what the commission did, saying: ''I'm not sure this approach is the right way to go. I was looking for a good reason. I'm not sure I've heard a good reason yet.'' John, you'll wait a long time for a good reason because there isn't one.
Clare's idea that unsupported allegations are a disincentive is a delusion. They'll not stop the problem from worsening, nor put the frighteners on criminals nor encourage people to put up their hands. As coach Henry has said, the codes are on the defensive and they could be forgiven for resenting the reputational and monetary damage they have sustained at the hands of the commission and the government, not to mention the effects on individual athletes, all of whom have been put under a cloud and none of whom have been accused. This environment is not conducive to the sporting codes dealing more effectively with any problem of performance-enhancing drugs; it's a recipe for minimal compliance and tokenism.
Meanwhile, four days after the news conference theatre of cruelty, the commission's chief executive, John Lawler, in response to requests from the AFL and the NRL, announced he had ''granted permission for both codes to confidentially notify the specific clubs within their respective codes'' that the commission identified. But he said the commission ''cannot name clubs and individuals, as they are protected under section 60 of the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002, which protects the rights of persons against reputational damage and the right to a fair trial''.
It's a bit late in the day for the commission to be worrying about reputational damage; it has slugged the reputation of all sport and it's hard to see how the tainted atmosphere it has created is conducive to effective law enforcement. The shutters must be going up all over the place.
And so to section 59AB of the same act. Under this section, the commission's chief executive can disclose information to private sector bodies for the purpose, inter alia, of preventing and detecting crime and enforcing laws. While these provisions are subject to a number of protections, they might just be an incitement for the commission to the megaphonic conduct in which it is now indulging. Further, notwithstanding the protections in section 59AB, its use could put at risk individuals who get caught up in the insidious business of guilt by association. For example, if the commission were to tell a private firm that it had seen one of its employees in the company of a known criminal, what might the firm do?
The government and the Parliament should think again about section 59AB. The commission may be more effective if it were simply to pass the results of its investigations, quietly and without political hoopla, to law enforcers and the anti-doping authority and let them get on with it. It's silly for Clare to say: ''If the report had been buried, we would have been criticised for not putting it out.'' It's not a matter of it being ''buried''; it's a matter of it being handled appropriately and effectively.
The commission has an annual budget of more than $100 million and 600 staff. More of both are routinely provided for special projects. With these bountiful resources, its report on organised crime and drugs in sport is deficient and there is little to be admired in the way the government and the commission have handled it.
The commission has said it ''has referred its findings in relation to suspected criminal activity to relevant law-enforcement agencies''. If they are not soon able to secure a significant number of successful prosecutions as a consequence, and if the anti-doping authority doesn't end up with more names on its lists, punters might be forgiven for thinking that the report alleging the ''widespread'' use of prohibited substances in sport is as it seems: more smoke than fire.
In the late 1970s, the government and the then Commonwealth Police launched a campaign, with great fanfare, about allegations that medical practitioners were conspiring with people in the Greek community to obtain social-security benefits fraudulently. One-hundred-and-eighty-one people were arrested and charged with conspiracy, and hundreds of further arrests were foreshadowed. The Greek community was grossly and unfairly maligned, and many of its members were traumatised. Of the 181 charged, one was found guilty of conspiracy and given a prison sentence, and three pleaded guilty and were given good behavior bonds. A further 33 were convicted of minor offences. There were no further arrests. The cost to the Commonwealth was estimated to be about $100 million. It's to be hoped that the lessons of this unfortunate case have not been forgotten.
Paddy Gourley is a former senior public servant.
