Australia's anti-doping body ASADA is to be redefined as an "enforcement body", with athletes stripped of their common law right to silence.

The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Amendment (Sport Integrity Australia) Bill 2019 would combine all nationally focused sport integrity functions into a single entity, wresting control from individual sporting codes which have developed their own sophisticated — and costly — integrity units.

The Australian system does not allow for automatic recourse to judicial review. And if this Bill sails through, they lose rights under contract and employment law. 

The Bill would remove athletes' rights to appeal sanctions through legal avenues such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, limiting all sports cases to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

Even European athletes have the right to judicial review of sports federations, CAS and Swiss Federal Tribunal, through the European Court of Human Rights. So it's just Australians participating in sport who will no longer have any common law rights or privileges. 

OMG no, no, no...... Why? Here are just a few examples of how ASADA managed the prosecution of 34 Essendon players:

Example 1. 

ASADA comment: “Whether a substance was on ASADA’s former Check Your Substances tool has no bearing on its status as a prohibited substance on WADA’s Prohibited List.”

Allan Hird comment: "Why does ASADA have a “Check Your Substance” tool then? Is it there to mislead athletes, lull them into a false sense of security, so ASADA can ping them?"

Example 2. 

Bruce Francis: "Office of the Australian Information Commissioner 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".

Example 3.

In an article dated 5 October, 2019 in the Herald Sun, Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority investigator Aaron Walker, WADA lawyers Richard Young and Brent Rychener and even the CAS panel, led by former NSW chief justice James Spigelman AC, QC, are accused of stating false and or unproven “evidence” as fact.

Spigelman concluded: “I don’t think it was an issue that he (supplements regimen architect Stephen Dank) got it (Thymosin Beta-4); it was a question of where it went.” 

Documents show references to the legal immunity booster “Thymosin” were repeatedly replaced with the term “Thymosin Beta-4”, a totally different substance — bolstering the case that players were injected with the latter. 

In this article, Michael Warner, Herald Sun journalist, indicates ASADA Investigator Aaron Walker's synopsis of his interview with chemist Nima Alavi records him saying "Thymosin Beta 4" whereas Alavi's lab assistant Vania Giordani records on a piece of paper he had in fact received Thymosin, and not Thymosin Beta 4. 

Justice for the 34 renews its call for an 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.

This is in the national interest, and it will help all athletes, not just the Essendon 34.

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

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