Page 1757 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 17 October 1989
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15 June. The interviewer on that occasion raised with the Minister the problem of exactly which drugs were illegal and which ones were not in the context of this debate. In response to raising that problem the Minister said the following:
Well, many of the substances to which you refer are not actually illicit in the sense of being illegal in some States. In a discussion I had with State sports Ministers some months ago, all States are going to prepare legislation to ban them, and once that has been done then obviously it will be a matter for the police in each State to make sure that their use is stamped out.
This underpins the importance of defining precisely which drugs, in this State or anywhere else, are considered illegal for the purposes of this campaign. I take it from the absence of any discussion in this paper on that question that the Government has that issue firmly under control. I would like to know whether it is. Perhaps the Minister, when he makes his speech in reply, could allude to this issue. If legislation is required to make it clear which drugs are illegal, which drugs are not acceptable as part of this drugs in sport program, we ought to see that very soon, because the advent of such a program before definitions have been clearly worked out would clearly be a mistake.
The second problem to which I want to allude is simply the problem of Australian sportsmen and women competing in an environment overseas, or in this country even, where the same sturdy attitude against drugs in sport has not been taken. I hope I am not defaming any countries when I say that there are some nations which have yet to take the bull by the horns and which indeed may be less than willing to take the bull by the horns. Allegations have been made that countries in Eastern Europe are less than interested in stamping out drug use since, in those countries, the performance and the achievement of their sportsmen and women are extremely important. Mr Wood made reference to the fact that in this country we tend to put a high price on success and we tend to be contemptuous and intolerant of failure in sportsmen and women. But, if that is true of this country, it is certainly even more so of some Eastern European countries. I suspect that that is partly the reason - and I say this only taking hearsay evidence on the matter - that in those countries the same emphasis on stamping out drugs in sport has not really been seen.
I hope that we are not, therefore, going to provide that our sportsmen and women are going to be competing in arenas where testing has been imposed to such an extent that it is stamped out in this country and among our athletes but not to the same extent with our competitors. Clearly, that would put our athletes at a distinct disadvantage.
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