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New model to hear sports complaints

3 minute read

Federal funding of $10 million will go towards a pilot program to independently hear complaints from within sports.

Australia has created an independent framework to hear complaints from within sports in a bid to halt flawed internal investigations.

The federal government will provide $10 million in funding for the two-year pilot program to start next March.

Complaints about abuse and intimidation and other issues can be heard under the new framework.

Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) chief executive officer David Sharpe said many matters currently are inadequately dealt with internally by the sports themselves.

"This has been amplified through the financial impact of COVID-19 which has left many sports under-resourced to deal with complex and emerging threats," Sharpe said in a statement on Thursday,

"The commonwealth funding will allow the agency to directly assess and, if required, investigate."

Sharpe said it was vital national sports organisations signed up to the framework.

"The pilot program is designed to be cost effective and will ease the administrative burden on sports ... while ensuring that such issues are being dealt with consistently, fairly and independently."

The framework has been backed by the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) Commonwealth Games Australia and Paralympics Australia.

AOC president John Coates said the framework was essential.

"There is absolutely no place for abuse in sport and the $10 million in funding addresses the missing link for effectively investigating complaints," Coates said in a statement.

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