Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) | Hansard source

There are four problems that remain in this bill. Firstly, the bill allows unlimited gambling advertising online. Secondly, the bill leaves predatory inducements untouched. Thirdly, on social media, it allows personalised, repeated predatory advertising when no-one is watching. Lastly, it's missing any future review to look at the consequences of the bill on gambling harm victims, the media industry and sports codes.

Australia has the highest gambling losses on planet Earth. That means this government, our government, does the worst job on planet Earth of protecting vulnerable people from gambling harm. In the coalition, we believe in three principles: freedom of choice, protecting kids and protecting the vulnerable. We want to apply these three principles to the bill and to those four problems I just outlined.

I want to be very clear. No-one on our side, or even the other side, is talking about doing anything to how you can gamble. It has never been easier to gamble in anyone's lifetime. You can gamble in question time. You can gamble in the party room. You can gamble in the bathroom. All you need is your phone—and no-one is talking about doing anything to that. No-one on our side is even talking about banning gambling advertising. We're not even talking about banning the ads. What we're talking about is protecting kids and vulnerable Australians from predatory advertising—with choice, not bans. It's just the advertising. I think it's very clear for the public listening to understand that.

I've socially punted, and I occasionally still do. So do many, many Australians. There's nothing wrong with that. Anyone who socially punts knows that, over time, you lose, but you do it for entertainment. That's not what we're talking about. We are not talking about that at all. What we're talking about is the parents of a young man I met, who read me a letter from him.

The letter said he was walking down the beach, and he talked about the addiction he had and the pull he felt. He had to pull his phone out, even though he was walking with his girlfriend and their dog, and he talked about the shame and self-hate he felt to look at the phone, to look at the odds, to put on a bet at the beach with a woman he wanted to marry. He talked about the shame he had that his mum had to take another job, in retirement, to pay off his gambling debts. And then his parents and his sister looked at me and cried when they told me he'd killed himself and that that was his suicide letter. That's what we're talking about.

What we're talking about is a young footballer with a gambling addiction, in his early 20s, who has a VIP manager looking after him—an older man, trying to be his mate. But this man is paid a percentage of what he gets this footballer to lose. The more he gets this footballer to lose, the more money this man takes home—performance pay. And so what does this man do? He buddies up with this footballer. He asks him what drugs he wants—asks him if he wants cocaine. He introduces him to the betting executives: 'Let's do a few lines with the CEO and the founder.' That's what we're talking about.

We're talking about the man in my office who was given hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonus bets, to lose millions. He was told: 'If you turn over a million dollars in the next month, we'll give you this big chunk of bonus bets.'

A man who loses his houses, his life and his livelihood—well, we're talking about the teacher I idolised at school. I watched gambling take everything from that man, over 15 years.

We're talking about protecting the vulnerable from advertising—that is it: the vulnerable, and kids. And it's surprising if anyone can disagree with that.

We're talking about watching the World Cup recently, where 850 kids from a local primary school in my electorate were watching Australia play Paraguay and 20 minutes before kick-off they see a bet365 ad where a talking head comes across the screen and walks them through the odds. This bothers me deeply, and I think it bothers millions of Australians deeply. We know that 80 per cent of people want to see fewer gambling ads.

Let's talk about the Prime Minister and his role in this legislation. For three years, the Prime Minister had the bipartisan Murphy report on his desk. He ignored it, day after day after day, for three long years. When it came time to draft the legislation, the Prime Minister capitulated—he bent to the betting companies, to the sporting codes, to the tech giants. When he did that, he ignored ordinary Australians. He ignored those people I just talked about, that this legislation should be about.

These vested interests have lobbyists who walk the halls of this parliament, in and out of offices. But the people who don't have lobbyists are those kids at the primary school, that teacher I had, and the young man with his betting VIP manager who's getting paid a percentage of what they can make him lose. These people do not have lobbyists. And this is the job of the Liberal Party. This is the job, I believe, of all elected representatives in this building.

The Prime Minister tried to stop this bill going to a Senate review, personally. He told the Senate and every Labor senator there to vote against the Senate review. They lost that vote, because the Liberals teamed up with the Greens. And that inquiry exposed exactly why scrutiny was needed.

What did we learn in this Senate inquiry that the PM didn't want us to hear? We learnt he didn't touch inducements. We learnt about these VIP predatory managers being paid on a percentage of losses or turnover and giving illegal drugs to people. We learnt about the unlimited gambling advertising online. We also learnt that the department was unable to explain where the three ads an hour came from or the gambling broadcasting windows. Why couldn't his department, the elected officials, explain this? Why?

The Prime Minister then said, at this very dispatch box right in front of me, 'Take it or leave it.' His words were:

This is a major step forward, and the parliament should vote for it.

He went on to say:

If they don't, then they do have the option of the status quo.

That's a threat unfitting of the office of Prime Minister—the threat of a small man, a schoolyard bully. Well, the Prime Minister has lost this public debate.

Well, he was—he was incredibly small and tried to bully this House and this chamber into accepting his substandard legislation. I won't be lectured to about a man who stood here and told this whole parliament to take it or leave it. Do you think we should take it or leave it?

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