Unless you have to rely on Microsoft…
ASADA’s Governance statement advises that it is subject to external scrutiny through judicial decisions, the Auditor General, Parliamentary Committees and Commonwealth Ombudsman reports.
BUt, more telling, it goes on to advise that “Ultimately, all decisions made by us can be reviewed by WADA”
As to judicial decisions, the ASADA bill seeks to limit recourse to civil remedies. Annual ANAO financial audits appear to be the limit of Auditor General scrutiny and there are no Commonwalth Ombudsman reports dealing specifically with ASADA.
And ASADA treats Estimates with disdain, as evident from McDevitt and more recently Sharpe taking questions on notice when the facts were at their fingertips.
bigallan, obviously you have a wealth of experience in Fed legal issues. What do you or any of your previous colleagues advice as to the best way to proceed, especially with the continued disdain shown by ASADA to the Senate and hence the Australian people?
An accumulation of bad media publicity is going to be the most telling.
Pezzullo gets away with murder at Esimates and elsewhere because he has Dutton’s.backing and the ALP is on song with the Coalition on such issues. There is no divide between the ALP and the Coalition on sport, except where there is a sniff of corruption to exploit in funding.
In short, the real action is not in Canberra institutions, until Ministers feel the need to distance themselves from ASADA.
Most of the ASADA scalps have been in relation to inadvertent doping at best, with ASADA doing target testing and chasing down a few dumb kids and handing out disproprtiate sanctions - when the big scandals are happening at the international level ( more often than not at Olympic level) with the international anti-doping infrastructure protecting the big sponsored stars, until they get caught out. None of the doping investigations by ASADA have related to systemic corruption of clean sport - or for that matter, corruption in competition results. So, what is the worth of ASADA to Australian sport.?
If ASADA plays it by the WADA rule book in regard to Willie Rioli and he gets a long suspension for taking a recreational drug and tampering ( seemingly to hide using weed);, there will be further bad publicity. It will not be enough for ASADA to rely on WADA rules. A few more athletes done in by ASADA might come forth.
I am posting a few extracts from Francis’s recent correspondence to Sharpe. Here is the third one.
Item 9: Aaron Walker Affidavit about Alavi, paragraph 81:
“At 11.03AM on 12 March 2014, I sent an email to Mr Alavi posing a number of questions. Within the body of the email I stated … As a summary, we have established with your help that 26 vials of ‘peptide Thymosin’ and 21 vials of Hexarelin were delivered to Dank in clear vials in January 2012… Now focussing on the Thymosin only – we (ASADA) say the evidence readily establishes it to be Beta-4 (my emphasis). Dank then procures those peptides (TB-4 (my emphasis) and Hexarelin) from you under the false impression of having them tested at Mimotopes; he then later claims they were fired and disposed of by Mimotopes.”
My Comment:
i. Walker is leading the witness (Alavi) by stating “We (ASADA) say the evidence readily
establishes it to be Beta-4.
ii. Walker wasn’t telling the truth. ASADA had not established that it was Beta-4. As the substance imported from China that was labelled Thymosin was never tested, no one, including Walker, ASADA, Dank, Alavi and the three panellists knows the name of the substance.
iii. Walker planted evidence by replacing Thymosin with TB-4 in his statement that:
“Dank then procures those peptides (TB-4 and Hexarelin)”.
Neil Balme hit out at the holiday whereabouts fines, labelling ASADA disingenuous.
When at Collingwood he labelled the ASADA/AFL process as “overly brutal” in regard. to Keeffe and Thomas taking clenbuterol laced party drugs.
Pretty clear it is a PR stunt in response to Warner’s articles to show that they are always even handed.
Typical joke “response” from ASADA hacks.
These fines are hilarious, and just reinforce what we already know - according to ASADA you can be guilty of nothing and still be guilty of something.
ASADA publishes a guide to the whereabouts rules on its site, with the caveat that, in the event of an inconsistency between the guide and ASADA policy, the policy prevails. But where to find the policy?
The whereabouts rules seem to be based on a presumption that athletes are predisposed to cheating.
For instance:
- Long distance travel may be entered, but boarding pass and other proof of travel required.
- Last minute changes are only acceptable in unforeseen circumstances ; overuse may be investigated
- three misfilings in one year could lead to a violation.
Yet the CEO of ASADA emphasises intelligence as the most effective tool in chasing down dopers That intelligence may be be obtained through ASADA smart phone hacking.
So phone hacking for ASADA is legal now!
That is a very handy tool. Can in the hacking process, the phone message say exactly what they want to hear? Could this be another way of cooking the evidence?
Beckie Scott, Chair WADA Athletes Committee, said in an interview after her final speech:
“For me, I felt that I was here as a representative of the athletes. And they’re not part of this club"
Last year, Scott resigned her position from the agency’s compliance committee, disgusted with its decision to reinstate Russia’s banned anti-doping committee in exchange for a promise of receiving data from its Moscow lab.
That data, received past a deadline WADA set and under conditions the agency had originally deemed unacceptable, has been tampered with; next week, the same committee Scott resigned from will deliver another recommendation about Russia’s fate.
But, Scott said, she stayed on in the athlete-representative role, “because I thought it was a cause worth fighting for.”
It has not been easy for her.
She has now resigned from that role.
Hmmm… WADA Athletes Committee.
If you have a question regarding WADA’s Athlete Committee, please send your inquiry to Stacy Spletzer-Jegen ([email protected]), WADA’s Senior Manager, Athlete Relations & Communications.
WADA (aka IOC) selects the athletes for that Committee, just as Sharpe selected the athletes for the ASADA athletes advisory group.
Steering clear of any athlete Union, let alone sports federations.
Without a warrant, it can hack locked smartphones and passwords.
Waiting for the development of a GPS implant for athletes, would save them all that red tape and potential wherabouts violations.
And ASADA can supplement its own intelligence with that of the ACIC, AFP, Borderforce, TGA and AHPRA, A’s well as AFL. If athletes are out of the country, it can ask another agency to test.
Criminals in need Australia would be subject to less surveillance.
Dae Blitzer,
The Essendon Football Club will hold its 146th Annual General Meeting ( AGM ) at 6.30pm sharp on Thursday 5 December 2019 at the Victory Room, Marvel Stadium, Docklands. (Registrations from 5.30pm.) The full notice of AGM is available from the Club’s website by clicking here.
This year, the AGM will once again be held in conjunction with the annual Members’ Forum, providing a platform to hear from the senior leaders within the organisation, as well as gain members’ feedback.
Please note that this event is limited to 2019 and 2020 members of the Club.
Thank you for your ongoing support of the Club and we hope that you are able to join us at this year’s AGM.
Yours sincerely
Michael Abrahams
Company Secretary
Anyone game to ask why ASADA has the EFC in its pocket while others feel free to criticise?
The club has had the necessary evidence for a long time as demonstrated in this letter.
15 December 2015
Guys
I can’t imagine anyone has had a worse first day as a boss than Lindsay Tanner has had as the new Essendon chairman. When he was in politics he kissed babies. Today he kissed arses – the AFL’s, WADA’s and the media’s.
I can’t recall Tanner the politician ever commenting on a hypothetical question. But today he made the beginner’s mistake of commenting on what should or shouldn’t happen to Jobe Watson IF he is found guilty. Neither Tanner nor Essendon CEO should have contemplated the players being found guilty.
Tanner should have said Jobe Watson could not possibly be found guilty for the following reasons:
-
The AFL/ASADA investigation was corrupted and therefore all evidence collected in that investigation should have been declared unusable because it was tainted. WADA should be severely censured for using tainted evidence in the CAS hearing.
-
Melbourne compounding pharmacist Nima Alavi received a parcel from China labelled “Thymosin”. As there is no such substance as Thymosin the substance could have been Thymosin Alpha (which is not banned), Thymomodulin (which is not banned), Thymosin Beta-4 (which is banned) or an unknown substance.
-
As neither Alavi, nor Stephen Dank, nor ASADA, nor WADA, nor the three Court of Arbitration for Sport panel members tested the Thymosin, no one knows what it was.
-
Even if Dank wanted to administer the banned substance Thymosin Beta-4, he had no idea what he administered because he didn’t have it tested. Similarly, the three CAS members have no idea what the substance was. Therefore, it is impossible for anyone to be confidently satisfied Job Watson and the other 33 players were administered the banned substance Thymosin Beta-4
-
As WADA made no attempt to prove player 1 was administered Thymosin Beta-4, and as it made no attempt to prove players 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 to 34 were administered Thymosin Beta-4 it is unforgivable CAS has taken this long to declare the players not guilty.
Bruce Francis
Some unflattering media reports in the AFR, the Hun and the Australian ( those two behind paywall)
How’s the lame and pathetic excuse from Dixon about not having the wealth of Gerry Harvey to put some of his hard earned into Evans Dixon.
More like don’t put any money into this dog.
Not even some of that $19m the Directors took out of 2018 earnings - like 36.5% straight into their pockets.