Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the motion as circulated.

Leave granted.

I thank the government and the minister for granting leave. There is clearly an urgent need to address this motion, because there is an urgent need to give all members of this House a free vote so that they can use their own judgement, informed by their own constituents, on whether or not there should be a three-year phase-out of advertising on gambling, which, as the motion makes clear, was the flagship recommendation of the Murphy report, brought down almost 2½ years ago.

The importance of addressing this urgently cannot be stated enough, because this is a very, very real issue that needs to be tackled quickly. Not only is the community broadly—clearly, the majority—sick to death of the endless gambling advertising; the community is also sick to death of the way that advertising is normalising gambling. The community is sick to death of the way that advertising is effectively grooming children to start gambling as soon as they can.

That's not an exaggeration. When you look at the evidence prepared by the Australia Institute, they found that last year almost one million young people aged between 12 and 19 gambled. That's all the evidence you need to make absolutely clear that all of this advertising is grooming young people to gamble as quickly as it can.

This isn't some esoteric argument.

See this speech in context