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

I second the member for Curtin's bill. It's an honour to second this bill because it would do what the Albanese government has revealed itself as too weak and too scared to do, and that is to finally ban gambling advertising. I've stood in this place countless times since I was elected in 2010 and quoted the research, the statistics and the reams of evidence about the ill effects of gambling addiction and the cost to the community, individuals and the economy. I even chaired the Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform.

So in June 2023, when Peta Murphy handed down a unanimous cross-party report on gambling harm with 31 clear recommendations, I was hopeful. I was hopeful because this isn't the minority government of 2010, which was so fearful in the face of a campaign from the gambling lobby. No, in this parliament Labor has an historic majority, the opposition are still in disarray, we have Peta's blueprint for reform and there's broad support for at least banning gambling advertising. In other words, the government has all they need to stand up to the gambling lobby. That's why it's particularly galling that, more than 1,000 days since the Murphy report was handed down, still the government has shown all the spine of a jellyfish.

In fact, in a particularly outrageous example of this lack of guts, the Minister for Communications personally told a former gambling addict and reform campaigner that she shouldn't speak to the government but instead go and convince the wagering companies, television networks and sporting codes of the need for reform. Good grief! Doesn't the minister know what her job is? It's not to wait for the companies she regulates to come and beg her to regulate them. No, it's to act in the public interest—in the interests of the hundreds of thousands of Australians experiencing or impacted by gambling addiction—and to enact reforms.

Of course, I don't blame the minister entirely because, as we all know, it's the Prime Minister that's the real blockage here, because he's scared of the media and gambling companies as well as the sporting codes. Hence he resorts to gaslighting and obfuscating and by crowing about reforms that were initiated by the Morrison government. When I called for a free vote on the matter, the Prime Minister deferred responsibility by saying that the Labor caucus makes decisions and that there's caucus solidarity. Well, there's solidarity and there's subordination. At the moment it looks to me like a case of caucus being completely subordinate to the Prime Minister. Frankly, the current impasse is scandalous. So I say to the PM again: if you can't bring yourself to take on the parasites benefiting from gambling, then get out of the way and let the rest of us do the work for you.

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