Sarah Benson: from a PhD in explosives to overseeing integrity in Australian sport

The Guardian

01-04-2025

Sarah Benson is the forensic scientist who has been appointed sport's top cop as chief executive of Sport Integrity Australia. Her CV includes working on federal police responses to the Bali bombings, the downing of MH17 in Ukraine and the volcanic eruption on New Zealand's White Island.
That experience prepared the 47-year-old for a not-straightforward initiation, where she found herself at the centre of the ferocious debate around illicit drugs in sport just as the AFL and the code's players were finalising an update to the controversial 'three-strike' policy.
An Australian National Audit Office report into SIA's operations published four weeks ago found the AFL had sent a list of 51 players to SIA for targeted testing – without saying why – sparking friction between the league and the AFL Players' Association and prompting AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon to publicly deny any player privacy had been breached.
The saga heightened suspicions within the players' union and put on hold discussions around the new illicit drugs policy, but Benson said on Monday – two weeks after her appointment, and having acted in the CEO role for eight months – there was nothing unusual about the list.
'It's considered best practice that we work with sports, and part of working with sports is they may provide us a list, particularly where they've got their own integrity unit,' she said.
The audit report also declared SIA's management of the National Anti-Doping Scheme was only 'partly effective', and that the organisation was at risk of 'regulatory capture' by the commercial sports.
Benson said she supported the audit process and it was aligned with a commitment to improvement within her organisation – set up in 2020 from Asada and previously disparate government sport integrity functions – but declared any suggestion that SIA was not independent to be incorrect.
'Whilst there's commentary that as a regulator we might be unduly influenced if a sport provides us a list of names, it is very clearly articulated in the Wada [World Anti-Doping Agency] international standard for testing and investigation that each organisation must plan and execute a testing plan, which is proportionate to the risk of doping,' she said.
SIA carries out testing of athletes on a 'user pays' basis with major professional sports, after working with officials to develop a testing plan, and charges fees for tests undertaken.
The organisation collected 316 samples from AFL players across 2023 and 2024, compared to 333 for players in football and 718 from those in NRL. But the audit report said testing in Australian rules and rugby league had 'deficiencies' including limited out-of-season testing.
'In context of the [audit] recommendations, part of the negotiations and discussions with sports would be to revisit the numbers and make sure that the numbers are proportionate to the risks, so that will be something that we look at,' Benson said.
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The ANAO report is the first high-profile challenge for Benson at the helm of SIA, but she was no stranger to sport even before joining the agency in 2023.
'The Olympics is the only reason I actually got the job in the AFP, I was second choice on a recruitment list,' she said. 'Late in 1999, because the AFP wanted to set up a national security and explosives capability to protect the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, I got a job to build that capability,' she said.
After completing PhD research in man-made explosives, Benson worked for the AFP for more than two decades, rising to chief forensic scientist. She was involved the organisation's response to many of the harrowing international disasters that affected Australians during that time, including the White Island eruption in 2019.
Benson recalls a family member of a person who had died expressing gratitude for returning the victim's body in time for Christmas. 'It highlights the point that everything we do at any point in time has an impact on an individual or beyond, and that we need to – where we can – operate with speed but also accuracy, and I think balancing those two translate into the sport integrity world as well,' she said.
In 2024, SIA managed over 250 child safeguarding or discrimination complaints across more than 50 sports, and in the six-month period up to February 2025 child safeguarding concerns accounted for every complaint investigated.
Benson said progress had been made to ensure children are safe in sporting settings, including having 32 integrity managers in place, but the safeguarding framework was still 'maturing'. 'I think we're in a good place in Australia, but there's still work to be done,' she said.