Grant Robertson calls on sporting organisations, athletes to solve 'toxic' culture allegations

Minister of Sport Grant Robertson. Photo / Photosport

Sports Minister Grant Robertson has called on national sporting bodies and athletes to help fix allegedly "toxic" environments within high-performance sport in New Zealand.

This comes after claims of bullying, intimidation and abuse against a number of the country's sporting organisations in recent times - including hockey, gymnastics and, most recently, canoe racing.

As revealed by the Herald last month, North Harbour Gymnastics - one of New Zealand's leading gymnastics programmes - have been accused of abuse, over-training and fat-shaming of athletes as young as eight.

Earlier this year, a number of Black Sticks veterans, including Gemma McCaw,, quit the squad in the wake of damning findings of a review into the sport's culture.

Allegations of bullying and intimidation within Canoe Racing New Zealand surfaced last week, with Stuff reporting that it led to six of the nine members of the 2017/2018 women's high-performance squad calling it quits in the past 18 months.

Canoe New Zealand have been hit with allegations of a toxic environment. Photo / Photosport

Although expressing his concern, Robertson on Tuesday said more people outside of Sport NZ itself needed to help enforce change.

"In the high-performance sport environment, we have had a number of issues, it is concerning to me," he said. "It's the reason why we have an independent complaints mechanism and athletes need to have the confidence to be able to use that and know that their issues will be taken seriously.

"It's incredibly important that we all play a role in that and Sport NZ through its integrity review has been doing that. It's important also that the national sports organisations are part of that and it's important that athletes themselves are able to make the complaints that they need to and know that the sports themselves will look after them.

"There are definitely issues here, everyone's got a part to play in resolving them."

Last month, head of the New Zealand Athletes Federation Rob Nichol urged parents and athletes involved in the gymnastics community to not use Sport New Zealand's independent complaints mechanism as he believed it was not competent and was "unfit for purpose".

Outgoing CEO of Sport NZ Peter Miskimmin, however, insisted that the system was both independent and professional.

Peter Miskimmin. Photo / Photosport

"I'm confused by those comments because that is exactly in our minds what we've put in place to help gymnastics," Miskimmin said. "It is completely independent, we may fund it, but that's as far as our relationship goes.

"This is a time where we want to bring confidence into the system. He asked for independence, it is independent. He asked for professional, this is a professional group of people who are currently doing it not only for us now, but have been doing it for New Zealand Rugby for some time and successfully.

"We have confidence in it and everyone else should."