Mr Bruce Francis, an independent investigator, has provided details of the difficulties he faced in obtaining documents from the Australia Sports and Doping Authority (ASADA) following the Essendon 34 investigation.

Mr Francis sent this correspondence to ASADA on 1 February 2019: 

To ASADA

re: FOI Request

Dear (name redacted)

Congratulations. You have won first prize. You will hold the record forever. No one can ever trump the contempt you have shown towards me over my FOI request.

You have redacted every single word on all eight documents and then given me a truck load of legislation to justify the redactions.

How am I supposed to determine whether you have applied the legislation correctly?

I hope you are not suggesting that I should trust you or anyone else at ASADA. It’s hard to image there has ever been a more corrupt organisation than ASADA and it is impossible to believe any government agency ever contained more liars.

For your edification, the OAIC and I were told twice by two separate ASADA liars that there was no such document as the CEO Recommendations.

Then, to my surprise, someone in ASADA came clean and admitted that there was such a document. But that person then lied and said it would be in contempt of court or parliament to release it.

When I proved ASADA had actually released the document to another organisation, ASADA dropped the contempt of court lie and released the 97-page (about 90 pages were redacted) to me. Unbelievably and unconscionably, 30 per cent of the contents page was redacted.

Hopefully, unsurprisingly to you, given the foregoing, I won’t be requesting anyone at ASADA review your shameful decision. I shall make a request to the Information Commissioner this morning to review your unjustifiable decision.

Yours sincerely

Bruce Francis

If ASADA act in a way that conforms to the law and rules, why is everything so secret? 

A recent Guardian article dated 2 Jan 2019 (linked below) appears to back up some of Mr Francis FOI claims.

Justice for the 34 renews its call for a Senate or Independent inquiry into anti-doping with wide ranging terms of reference which allow all sporting bodies, all athletes, and all interested parties to make representations.

It’s in the national interest.

Please support our petition and an independent inquiry to sort this mess out.

More info at: https://www.facebook.com/justiceforthe34/