2016 National Sport Integrity Forum

With public confidence and trust in sport stretched like never before, governance, integrity, culture and the capacity for sport to police itself were the hot topics at the second Integrity in Sport Forum on Monday 9 May.

The Sport Australia Hall of Fame and Victoria University hosted forum, attended by over 200 Australian sport leaders, tackled the issues with a stellar panel of national and international experts – led by Australia’s most experienced sports administrator Kevan Gosper AO.

The conversation was broad, wide ranging and challenging, with a diverse range of opinions on key topics. Click here to review a transcript of key elements of the forum.

The Integrity in Sport Forum offered insights, expert opinions and thought provoking analysis on what we can do to ensure greater integrity in sport.

We encourage you to share this link with your membership and extended networks so that they can view the entire forum discussion.

In addition, the event webpage has further reading, including opinion pieces on Sports Integrity from Victoria University Professor Hans Westerbeek and Associate Professor Dennis Hemphill, Sport Australia Hall of Fame chairman John Bertrand and SKINS chairman Jaimie Fuller.

ASC guidelines

Australian Sports Commission has released a set of new practical guidelines which will be provided to every sport and professional club in Australia to assist leaders with the management and oversight of integrity issues confronting sport.

The guidelines provide a practical roadmap and support reference for sports to further strengthen their own integrity frameworks.

ASC CEO Simon Hollingsworth said “Laws can be strengthened, sanctions increased or stricter compliance introduced, but the most effective tool in the fight to protect sporting integrity is for every leader to be more proactive in identifying and reducing threats to the integrity of sport.”

“Protecting the integrity of sport is an important ethical issue. It can have commercial impact too, affecting areas such as sponsorship, membership and participation.

“I encourage sports to use these guidelines for the better protection of your sport, athletes, members, fans and stakeholders.”

Don’t run alongside the bus

The Sport Australia Hall of Fame Board Member, Sally Capp, provided an excellent summary at the conclusion of the evening.

“We talked about the values in sporting clubs and the values of winning, and operating in the best interests of the clubs. I’ve been a friend of a man named Simon Illingworth (police whistle-blower), who as he said, stood in front of corruption and really called it out at the risk of his own life.”

“One of his main points is that you do always have people who want to break the rules, they’re the people sitting on the bus.”

“There are also a few people who are willing to stand in front of the bus, like you Jaimie (Fuller).”

“But he said the really disappointing thing that we all need to address is all the people running alongside the bus that understand what is going on but aren’t doing enough about it.”

“So, how do we encourage more in the value of sport to actually give people the courage to stand up and yell out because if we had more of those people, a la all the reporters that call these things out and the other people involved in sport then we may be able to deal with it earlier and bring more transparency to sport and deal with it and move on with more of the values we want to promote.”