All politically motivated attacks on anyone’s freedom should be exposed and fought. Agencies like ASADA that consider themselves above the law should be opposed and exposed. Anyone who has their rights restricted should be supported and encouraged to defend their rights.

Following post received, with gratitude, from guest blogger TomB.

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The investigation into Australian Football League club Essendon players receiving drugs has concluded that there was no illegal substance injected. The AFL’s anti-doping tribunal found that had proper records been kept then there would have been no need for an inquiry.

More than two years of investigations and public grandstanding by a government organisation fanned along by the media has now started to turn against that agency. The background to the investigation is now coming to light.

The Labor government wanted to get the focus off their incompetent government and were willing to ruin people’s careers and place others under unnecessary negative scrutiny, not to mention defamation slander and gossip that accompanies a witch hunt.  This was just to ‘buy time’ for the Labor government not to even save it – which nothing could do.

The media was happy to accommodate and the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) saw an opening for it to gain more money and more power. This was always the case and one journalist Chip Le Grande from The Australian did actually report most of the facts over the two years; however no other journalist did or bothered to acknowledge or respond to his articles. Even now there are journalists saying we will never know if they took illegal drugs. No player returned a positive test and there is no evidence of illegal drugs being administered. The criteria for not knowing is the same as for everyone else, we will never know if anyone is given something they weren’t supposed to get but any reasonable person assumes the doctor is giving you a flu shot when he says he is.

ASADA has now shifted focus to the way drugs were given and is trying to salvage some credibility by pretending to be concerned about the same players they want banned from professional sport. They are doing this not through the proper channels but through the media. The outcome has finally exposed what should have been reported from the beginning: a fruitless attempt by a government agency for relevancy and an orchestrated attempt by the government of the day to distract attention away from its poor governance.

The disappointing aspect  is that this was so easily achieved. So many people were only too happy to jump on board. They found a club isolated and players singled out and then “put the boots in”. Other clubs saw an advantage for themselves as did other players and took full advantage. Now they are trying to cover this up or make excuses for their opportunistic behaviour.

The political issue here is that it is still possible to have scapegoats, witch hunts etc. It may only be sport but it was instigated by a political party in order to gain popularity. The fact that it was the ALP is not surprising as one would expect that if any party is going to resort to fascist tactics it is the ALP. All politically motivated attacks on anyone’s freedom should be exposed and fought. Agencies like ASADA that consider themselves above the law should be opposed and exposed. Anyone who has their rights restricted should be supported and encouraged to defend their rights. It would seem at the moment professional sports people are denied the same rights as others.