Nick Xenophon (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

For instance, recommendation 6 of the O'Farrell review at page 154 states:

Operators should be required to apply additional consumer protections where ‘credit’ or deferred settlement betting is available.

It does not say what those additional measures are. This is one example. Could the minister comment on that? Recommendation 7 states:

Links between online wagering operators and payday and other lenders should be discouraged.

'Discouraged' does not sound like a legislative enforcement, so I query that as well. Recommendation 4 states:

A national self-exclusion register that applies across all online operators should be developed, either by an expansion of the Northern Territory register or through a new national system. The costs associated with such a register should be borne by online operators.

With recommendation 4, through you Chairman, I think many would consider the Northern Territory register largely ineffective. 'Developing a self-exclusion register' does not mean it will be implemented. I am worried that the wording of the O'Farrell review, whilst well intended, is quite vague. If it is only going as far as that, it could be that we get recommendations to discourage something but that it does not actually have any legislative teeth to do some good in terms of reducing consumer harm.