Page 1758 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 17 October 1989
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Finally, Mr Speaker, I want to raise the question of who does the hit-and-run testing to which the Government has alluded. It is, of course, part of this national program that random testing of athletes should occur. The Minister, in his statement, says that the ACT would like to see random dope testing at championships, competitions and during training. I know that kind of breadth is very welcome. However, he does not make it clear in the statement whether the ACT or a Federal agency of some kind should be conducting the testing or whether it is going to be done purely by national and other sporting associations. This makes some difference, of course.
Again, I quote Senator Richardson, the Federal Minister in this area. He said in the Age of 12 May, in referring to internal testing programs run by sports bodies, that those programs would be superseded by a new agency that the Federal Government hoped to establish. He said:
If it is going to work, you have to have one body responsible for the lot. Where you allow any sport to do its own testing, that testing is immediately suspect.
How that meshes in with what the Minister says here, when he says he supports moves by national and other sporting associations for random dope testing, I do not know. Perhaps the Minister, if he is around somewhere, can refer to that fact also when he makes his reply in this debate. I would certainly be interested in knowing what is going to happen in this area and, indeed, whether legislation is intended to be introduced by this Government to define further or more clearly which drugs specifically are to be banned as part of this drugs in sport program.
MR WHALAN (Minister for Industry, Employment and Education) (4.56), in reply: Mr Speaker, in relation to the points which have been raised during the debate, I will make some specific comments, but what I would like to say is that the Government is particularly grateful for the unanimous support of the Assembly for the thrust of this policy and the universal recognition that performance enhancing drugs are used only by cheats. The use of drugs is cheating; it can be seen only in that way. It has no merit whatsoever.
I think that we should acknowledge that the ACT is the first State or territory to take the position that has been taken, and we have been guided in that by the assistance of the commitment of the Commonwealth Government to its policies in relation to the use of drugs in sport.
I will refer to the two specific issues. The list of drugs related to this policy will, of course, include quite a number of legal drugs and drugs that are legally available across the counter, but they are placed in the category that would ban them in these cases because they can affect performance. So the blood pressure tablets based on beta-blockers fall into that particular category; some cough
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