Safety, integrity at heart of Sport NZ initiative
Sport New Zealand has moved to make sport safer, with the introduction of an independent mediation service, an independent integrity work group and a new community guidance portal, with a focus on safeguarding children.
The new initiatives are among 22 recommendations from the Sport NZ 2019 Sport Integrity Report, announced in Wellington yesterday.
Sports lawyer Don Mackinnon will chair the newly formed independent Integrity Working Group, while sportspople from grassroots to elite will be able to access the mediation service run independently of Sport NZ by Immediation New Zealand Limited.
The service will launch on or before February 1, 2021, with an initial two-year operating timeframe, and will replace Sport NZ’s Independent Complaints Mechanism, which was only available to high performance athletes until uncovered welfare issues within gymnastics and it was then opened to everyone within the sport.
The service will also offer protection for whistle-blowers.
Sport NZ partnerships and communications general manager Jennah Wooten said the mediation service will be ‘‘an independent way to escalate issues if they arise’’. The integrity work group will ‘‘help us identify how all these measures can be housed into the future for maximum effectiveness’’.
‘‘What we have launched constitutes a robust and appropriate set of complementary initiatives to support the sector in creating environments and experiences that are safe, fair and inclusive for all New Zealanders,’’ she said.
Michael Heron QC, chairman of Immediation New Zealand, said the mediation service was needed following reported issues within sport over the last two years.
Recommendations for a mediation service have come for a ‘‘number of years’’, Heron sad. It was first recommended by Mackinnon in his 2015 review of the Sports Tribunal.
Heron said it was good Sport NZ and the government had ‘‘finally’’ taken steps towards installing the mediation service which will ‘‘get issues to the right place, at the right time and resolve them’’.
Calls for an independent Integrity Working Group were again brought to the fore following
ongoing investigation into gymnastics.
‘‘...when people think of integrity in sport they think of issues like match fixing, cheating, doping and use of insider information. While these issues are important and our group will certainly look at those issues; is far broader than that,’’ Mackinnon said.
‘‘In sport it covers bullying, harassment, discrimination and abuse.
‘‘It links into some of our most fundamental human rights that apply in sport, just as they apply to every other part of our lives.’’