Our work
Athlete Rights Australia does three things.
We support people who have been harmed in sport. We contribute evidence to the inquiries, reviews and public debates that shape policy. And we advocate for a national standard that would protect everyone in sport, not only some.
All three are connected. What we learn from the people who contact us is what we take into the policy work, and the policy work is how we stop the same thing happening to the next person.
Supporting people harmed in sport
People come to us at different stages. Some have just realised that what happened to them was not normal. Some have been in a complaints process for years. Some are parents who do not know whether to raise a concern about their child's club.
We help people understand what has happened, what their options are, and where to find legal, psychological and advocacy support. We explain how complaints, integrity and investigation processes work, because they are rarely explained by the organisations running them.
We do not take carriage of cases and we are not a legal service. We are working to establish formal referral pathways with legal practitioners so that people who need representation can be connected to it properly.
With consent, and without identifying anyone, what we learn shapes everything else we do.
The problem, in two parts: Where the system fails.
Children
Australia has made real progress on child safeguarding. Child Safe Standards, Working With Children Checks, mandatory reporting and the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations sit above sport's own policies and give them force in law.
That framework is not yet consistently applied. Protections still depend on the sport, the state and the club, and the further you get from the elite system the thinner they become. Most Australian children play in community clubs, which is where oversight is weakest.
Adults
Adult athletes have no equivalent framework at all.
Sport's integrity system does address abuse, harassment and misconduct affecting adults. But that protection rests almost entirely on policies written and administered within the sport sector itself. There is no external legal standard an adult athlete can point to, no mandatory reporting obligation, and no redress scheme. Where a process fails them, the remaining options are discrimination law, contract, employment law or civil litigation, all of which require money and representation most athletes do not have.
The result is a two-tier system. A seventeen-year-old gymnast and an eighteen-year-old gymnast, in the same squad, with the same coach, do not have the same protection.
Adult athletes are also frequently in positions of acute dependence: on selection, funding, scholarships, accreditation and a coach's goodwill. That dependence is precisely what makes speaking up costly, and it is not recognised in the way a child's vulnerability is.
What we are calling for?
A National Safeguarding in Sport Act 🇦🇺
Australia needs Commonwealth legislation that sets a single, enforceable standard for athlete safety, reaching beyond the federally funded high performance system to the community clubs where most Australians, and most Australian children, actually play.
The case is not speculative. Dr Alison Quigley's doctoral research, Are We Safer Now?, applies documentary analysis to twenty-five years of child safe policy in Australian sport and maps precisely where the framework fails.
Its findings include:
Policy gaps expose athletes to harm, directly through coaching practice and indirectly through inadequate reporting systems
Regulatory coverage is incomplete, leaving whole categories of participant unprotected
Investigation processes frequently fall short of trauma-informed standards
Poor institutional response compounds the original harm, a pattern recognised in the literature as systems abuse
Two reforms, both needed
ARA supported the parliamentary petition led by the Centre for Ending Harm in Sport, which called on Parliament to legislate a minimum enforceable standard for athlete welfare in federally funded sports organisations. That reform addresses a real and urgent gap.
A National Safeguarding in Sport Act is a distinct and complementary shift. It would extend protection beyond the federally funded system to community sport.
We advocate for both, and we are careful not to conflate them. Each represents a different scope of protection, and each needs to be argued on its own terms.
What four years has produced
Everything below was achieved by volunteers, without funding or staff.
Gymnastics Australia joined the National Redress Scheme following ARA advocacy, opening a redress pathway for survivors that did not previously exist.
A decision was secured at the Gymnastics Ethics Foundation, the international tribunal, in a matter concerning a child who suffered a serious injury and the institutional conduct that followed.
A ground-breaking discrimination case was supported through to resolution, alongside years of assisting athletes and families through complaints processes.
Public accountability, including contributions to reporting on ABC's 7.30 and to the review of the Australian Sports Commission Act.
The evidence base, through Dr Alison Quigley's doctorate, completed in 2026.
Working alongside others 🤝
Strength comes from connecting with others whose missions align with athletes' rights. The organisations below have worked or campaigned alongside ARA, and we thank them for permission to use their names and logos.
Gymnasts for Change (G4C)
A survivor-led global network of current and former gymnasts, coaches, parents and supporters campaigning for change. G4C aims to end abusive coaching practices in gymnastics, support those who have experienced abuse, and create reform for better athlete welfare worldwide.
The Athlete Survivors' Assist (The Assist)
Formerly The Army of Survivors. The Assist works to end sexual abuse in sport by bringing awareness, accountability and transparency to sexual violence against athletes at all levels. Founded in 2018 by more than forty survivors, it advocates, assists and drives systemic change, grounded in the leadership of survivor athletes.
Centre for Sport and Human Rights (CSHR)
CSHR works to advance a world of sport that fully respects and promotes human rights, by generating awareness, building capacity and delivering impact. Its work spans preventing human rights violations linked to sport, ensuring effective and accessible remedy, and promoting human rights in sport.
The Centre for Ending Harm in Sport (CEHS)
CEHS is an Australian not-for-profit working to end abuse, discrimination and harm in sport. Founded by Olympian Marissa Williamson Pohlman, CEHS is led by athletes and survivors.
Australian athletes have no national, legally enforceable welfare standards. Protections vary across the Commonwealth, states and territories, and athletes competing overseas can fall outside them entirely. When harm occurs, athletes are too often silenced.
CEHS is calling on the Australian Government to legislate minimum athlete welfare standards. We centre survivor voices, hold sporting bodies accountable, and push for independent reporting and real consequences. Sport should be safe for every athlete, at every level.
We are independent of every sporting organisation in Australia, and we do not accept funding from sporting bodies or agencies whose conduct we may need to examine.
