Australia's anti-doping body ASADA is to be redefined as an "enforcement body", with athletes stripped of their common law right to silence.

Key points: Proposed changes would see ASADA handed more powers to investigate athletes suspected of doping offences

Proposed changes would see ASADA handed more powers to investigate athletes suspected of doping offences Greens senator Nick McKim said athletes would have their human rights eroded under the new powers

Greens senator Nick McKim said athletes would have their human rights eroded under the new powers The Australian Athletes Alliance is also concerned athletes' rights are being taken away

If passed, changes to the act governing ASADA would see it renamed Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) and hand significantly more power to the CEO of the body.

The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority Amendment (Sport Integrity Australia) Bill 2019 would combine all nationally focused sport integrity functions into a single entity, wresting control from individual sporting codes which have developed their own sophisticated — and costly — integrity units.

The legislation is currently making its way through the Senate, with the Joint Committee on Human Rights raising a number of issues.

Speaking to The Ticket, committee member Greens senator Nick McKim said, based on the legislation, the new body would have "significant powers" ASADA did not currently have.

Those powers include a lowering of the threshold required to issue a "show cause" notice requiring a person to attend an interview.

Currently, the threshold requires ASADA's CEO to "reasonably believe" a person of interest has questions to answer. That threshold would be reduced to "reasonably suspect".

A three-person panel that approves all show-cause notices would be abolished, leaving the CEO with sole discretionary powers.

Athletes would also have their right not to self-incriminate eroded under the legislation.

"Those are very important human rights," Senator McKim said.

Tasmanian Greens senator Nick McKim has cautioned against reducing athletes' rights. ( ABC News: Emilie Gramenz )

"In fact, the High Court has found that the right not to self-incriminate is a human right which protects personal freedom, privacy and dignity — and those are really important rights in our country."

"We need to be very careful when we move to erode those rights just for a particular group of people — in this case athletes including footy players, cricket players and a wide range of professional sports people."

The proposed legislation is in response to a review of Australia's sports integrity arrangements — the Wood Review — with reforms recommended to enhance the nation's ability to address integrity threats such as doping, match fixing, corruption, organised crime and bullying and abuse.

The focus of the bill is heavily skewed towards those who play sport, rather than those who govern it.

"This is biased strongly against athletes and towards eroding the rights of athletes," Senator McKim said.

"It is not focused anywhere near strongly enough on ensuring that we have integrity at the higher levels of sport management."

"And that's of course leaving aside the obvious irony of a Government that is caught up in a massive corruption scandal around sports grants trying to pass a piece of legislation that it claims will improve integrity in sport."

He also said the Government needed to "come clean" on what the term "enforcement body" actually meant when referring to the SIA.

"The material that they've published in association with this legislation does not clearly define what they mean by that term," he said.

Questions remain over the nature of the enforcement powers, how enforcement related activities will be undertaken, and by whom.

The Federal Sports Minister senator Richard Colbeck was unavailable for an interview when approached by The Ticket.

The Australian Athletes Alliance (AAA) is an umbrella organisation representing the player associations of most of the country's professional sports.

Its general secretary Jacob Holmes said the alliance was concerned the burden on athletes continued to grow while at the same time their rights were diminished.

"It's a significant issue really that we're increasing the burdens, we're removing athletes' human rights and legal rights, and also removing our ability to address — if there is a breach — to ensure there is accountability."

The legislation would remove athletes' rights to appeal sanctions through legal avenues such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, limiting all sports cases to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

"We are denying the right of an athlete to actually hold the national sports organisations to account … and that's where we see that this proposed legislation goes too far," he said.

"As a representative body of over 4,000 athletes, we want the athletes as part of the solution because they have the most to lose."

Athletes have already given up many of their rights in pursuit of sports integrity — particularly in the fight against doping — submitting themselves to invasive protocols on a daily basis.

Mr Holmes said the athletes were not being met halfway.

"They really want to protect the integrity of sport," he said.

"They've gone a long way to doing that by giving up a lot."

"But at the same time we're not saying 'well, here's some support for you, here are some protections for you, here's a way you can hold us to account to make sure we're doing the right thing', and that's where we see this is actually out of step."

The establishment of Sport Integrity Australia will also require changes to the Australian Sports Commission Act to guard against any overlap of functions and responsibilities.

Internationally there is a move towards sports policies that specifically recognise human rights.

As the bill currently stands, this would put Australia at odds with that trend.