Request Inquiry into Administration of Sport of Wushu in Australia

Wushu is a term internationally recognised as synonymous with Chinese Martial Arts and is a sport recognised by the International Olympic Committee (http://www.olympic.org).

The disciplines of Wushu include modern and traditional competitive routines as well as sparring. Tai Chi is an example of Wushu disciplines widely used as means to maintain physical and psychological wellbeing. There are thousands of highly educated and qualified Wushu practitioners in Australia.

As with any other sport in Australia, the responsibility for development of Wushu is assigned to a National Sporting Organisation (NSO) recognised by the Australian Sports Commission. During the last twenty years, this status was claimed by various organisations with varying legal status but linked to each other through the same limited group of people assuming the virtually uninterruptable leadership. The most recent of them - Kung Fu Wu Shu Australia Limited (KWA Ltd) – was created in 2010. Now it is claiming to be the NSO for Wushu despite the fact that the current official legally binding contract with the ASC was made with a completely different company deregistered in 2004 (AKWF – Australian Kung Fu (Wushu) Federation Limited). The KWA Ltd on its website states that it has no links to any of the previous organisations.

The Australian Sports Commission is well aware of numerous irregularities in the administration of Wushu both on its own side and on the side of all those previous organisations that have presented themselves as “governing bodies for Wushu” to the Australian public for more than twenty years but has ignored the legitimate requests for clarifications from the public.

In the meantime, the growing dissatisfaction and confusion about questions as simple as “Who is NSO for Wushu in Australia?” and “How did they obtain their NSO status?” negatively affects all Wushu practitioners and especially those who are willing and capable of competing on the international level. The administrative practices of all NSOs for Wushu have made it very difficult for the Wushu community in Australia to access resources normally available to other sports and confused many professionally qualified coaches and judges.

It is imperative that there is a trust in a government-recognised body. Labelling other independent organisations as “unacceptable” or “unsuitable”, avoiding any public exposure and employing tactics incompatible with the modern democratic principles resulted in the complete loss of public trust in any so called “governing bodies for Wushu in Australia” as well as any trust in the government agencies that would accept such organisations as genuine sporting representatives.

View the supporting documents at http://www.awcwatch.org/Wushu-Petition-References-09-07-2013.pdf

The Australian Wushu practitioners want their peak sporting body to be open, transparent, inclusive, governed by democratically elected board that is free of bullying and criminal history.