Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. I was one of a group of members of this parliament who signed an open letter to the Prime Minister, along with former prime minister Howard and retired state premiers. In that letter, the signatories and I were asking him, the Prime Minister, to go further on gambling reform than the package he had originally announced. I did not sign that letter lightly. It came through frustration that this issue had been left to fester and that what was being proposed was manifestly inadequate.

Members from across this chamber, the government, opposition, crossbench—in listening to their speeches, I feel that they've reached the same conclusion independently about the same set of problems. That should tell the government something. I hope it's one of those times when the leaders of the government listen to their backbench, listen to the concerns and negotiate in good faith to get something that's actually meaningful. I didn't appreciate the statement from the Prime Minister at the end of question time: 'Take it or leave it. If you don't like it, we can go on with a status quo.' That's not how you deal with these issues.

I set a test myself on these issues, and I want to talk about it a bit to share my decision-making. I judge any bill on whether it protects children and whether it stops predatory conduct aimed at people who are already in trouble. I also look at what we decide as a parliament is legal and what people tell us has safe levels of use. I'm going to talk about tobacco, alcohol and gambling. All the evidence is that there is no safe use of tobacco. We continue to make it legal. We have a regulatory regime that has pushed a lot of the use into illegal products, and that is creating its own set of problems. I think we've got a lot of issues—and I see them all the time in my home state of Victoria—with the fact that our efforts to regulate that have gone so far that it's pushed use into illegal forms. But, having said that, there is no safe use of tobacco. It is legal, but there's no safe use. So there should be no advertising. I'm comfortable with that.

We discussed alcohol yesterday with the minister, the wine industry, the brewing industry and the spirits industry. Many Australians enjoy alcohol responsibly. Medical experts tell us there is a safe level of use for that product, so we allow some advertising of that product. We try to stop it being targeted at children because there is no safe use for children.

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