Locke Keith: Sports Anti-Doping Bill — Second Reading 
Locke Keith: Sports Anti-Doping Bill — Second Reading 
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KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is supporting the Sports Anti-Doping Bill. The discussion has been a good one. The very bad consequences of drug use in sport have been outlined by previous speakers. The health effects are substantial. 
Two of the most prominent cases of drug use in New Zealand sport that led to what appears to be early death involve Robin Tait the discus thrower and Graham May the weightlifter. Those people died young probably as a result of drug use in their sports. We have to realise why drug use takes place. It is not just a case of individuals taking drugs for their own gratification. One of the problems is the nature of sport particularly the nature of professional sport in the world today. A huge amount of money is involved. One can become a multimillionaire overnight and famous throughout the world. Very often sport is tied up with national pride so pressure is put on the officials as well as the athletes to bend the rules and engage in drugs in sport. 
Even New Zealand in its own way can encourage that situation by the way it sometimes promotes sport. I am referring here to the controversy that happened after Sport and Recreation New Zealand announced its grants for high-performance sports. The criteria for receiving these grants seemed to include sports that New Zealand could win at internationally. When the approach of winning is taken as being the main criterion the door is opened to the use of drugs in sport. I am not saying that would be the case in New Zealand but it would be the case in some other countries. For example Sport and Recreation New Zealand gave money to sports that would most likely win at the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games and left aside the most popular participation sport in New Zealand today in terms of the number of kids playing—soccer. It is obvious that because soccer is an international sport and we are a country of just over 4 million people we would be very unlikely to win the World Cup. But we should still encourage high performance in this sport just as other countries do. Other countries take pride in their small successes in soccer and they do not have the goal that they have to win or it is nothing. So I think Sport and Recreation New Zealand is going down the sort of track that has encouraged the use of drugs in sport overseas. 
It is very disheartening for people competing in international sports such as athletics—particularly for women in athletics from the sprint events through to middle distance—to know they are very unlikely to break a world record. The world record holders in women’s athletics are all from Eastern European countries China and the United States. Those countries engaged heavily in drug use for their sportspeople and this was encouraged by officials. The records of Florence Griffith Joyner in the 100 metres and 200 metres of Eastern Europeans such as Jarmila Kratochvilova and of the Chinese runner Qu Yunxia in the 1500 metres were set quite a while ago and are very unlikely to be broken because they were so drug-induced. Well that is the suspicion; there is no proof because we did not have the testing regime at that time. It is good that we are bringing forward a bill like this one because we need that testing nationally and internationally to be able to stop that sort of thing from happening in the future. 
However there could still be a problem. Examples have been raised already about the cheating that has been encouraged for a period by the American athletics authorities. It seems that those authorities have upped their act and they now have some good people in their sports drug agencies. But there have been scandals with the most recent one involving the 100 metres world record holder Justin Gatlin. Previously scandals involved Tim Montgomery and as was mentioned by a previous speaker Carl Lewis. There is a history of drug scandals so we cannot even trust the men’s world records completely given that they all come from the United States—if we go from the 100 metres through to the 400 metres and include the hurdles. So that is a problem for young athletes. 
It is important to have people motivated and to have role models but it is very hard to have those things if there is not a level playing field and if the world records that athletes are competing against were set through the use of drugs. There have been a number of scandals recently in other sporting areas like cycling. The most recent example occurred during the Tour de France when Floyd Landis was found to have taken drugs and on many occasions there has been suspicion about the previous winner of the Tour de France Lance Armstrong. 
We are dealing with a serious problem and it is important to try to set a bit of a lead in the world on this issue in terms of adhering to the world anti-doping code. I think that with our example and by working with other countries we can perhaps bring countries like China along. In the past China has been engaged in drugs in sport at the level of officials and athletes. Hopefully China is moving beyond that although obviously the national pride element comes in and the Chinese will want to do well in the 2008 Olympics. So the pressure of the world community will hopefully stop that from happening. 
We should encourage very serious penalties such as lifetime bans for athletes who are found to be using drugs in sport. It is disheartening to see that some of the bans last only for a year or two before those athletes are back in their sport. We have to be very serious about the bans. It is good that this bill has a clause stating that New Zealand athletes have to be involved in decision making on drug rules because athletes definitely do not want to compete against people who are influenced by drugs. So athletes will help to strengthen the procedures and the penalties. 
It is a big battle because often the chemists for the cheats are one step ahead of the testers. But if the world works together we can help to reduce that gap. There are various techniques we could use like keeping blood and urine samples for some time into the future so that we can apply new tests on earlier samples. There are ways to reduce the use of drugs in sport that I think the Sports Anti-Doping Bill will enhance. The Greens support this bill. Thank you.