Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

We stand here today with a comprehensive set of reforms before us. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the work that's gone into the legislation that's before us. I've been in the parliament for 13 years now. I've had lots of opportunities to be the chair and deputy chair of House committees, prepared lots of reports with lots of recommendations. I want to address this issue up front. When you present a report to the parliament from a House committee, there are recommendations; they are a couple of sentences. But to turn sentences into legislation does take time in this place and I want to acknowledge that. Quite a lot of the feedback that I've got in my electorate has been: why is it taking so long? To turn a couple of sentences in a recommendation into legislation does take time regardless of the report. In the previous government, we did lots of reports on education reform and, out of respect, the then government looked at them. This government responded to some of those reports and they were tabled in this parliament. This isn't lost between governments; it's picked up by other ministers. But I want to put up front that it does take a lot to turn a report and recommendations into legislation and that consultation has happened in a genuine way.

The reforms that we have in front of us address the concerns our community has, that there's been a disconnect, that harm is now being done to children and others through online gambling, that there's been a change in the way in which gambling interacts with everyday life and, in particular, sport. The changes that are before us today will return us to the situation where families and children can engage in sport, grow up watching the game that they love without thinking about gambling and without it being imposed on them at the same time.

The changes before us minimise the exposure to harm of wagering advertising, break the link between sport and wagering, and reduce the saturation and targeting of wagering advertising. What has shifted in the 20 or 30 years is the change in technology, and these laws are trying to keep up with that change. We can walk around with a phone in our pocket which is constantly pushing advertising and gambling to us. Streaming and online services have changed the nature of advertising.

I want to acknowledge all the people in my electorate who've written to me and raised this concern, from local branch members to local welfare groups to individuals who share their own story—their story of gambling, their story of their son being addicted to gambling or their story of growing up in a household of gambling. I'm the daughter of a gambler. My experience in childhood was very different to others and to what they're experiencing today. I remember being very young, and on Saturdays my afternoons were spent at the track—the racetrack—not like other kids. I remember learning mathematics through using the form guide. I remember that's how I did my times tables. After my dad and I had done the delivery runs for our second-hand business, and we'd gone to all the things that we did on a Saturday morning, our daddy-daughter time was at the track.

I think back now to that experience. I was the odd one out in the playground on a Monday when we reflected on what we did on the weekend. Every other kid didn't go to the track with their dad. Every other kid didn't learn their times tables by writing down the late mail. Every other kid wasn't told that the betting ring wasn't safe for a young girl because daddy had to do the conversations with the bookmakers, but they could just roam around the track chatting to people. I used to make up stories that my dad was a trainer so I wouldn't get so embarrassed. He wasn't. He was a gambler.

What changed was that our society could catch that kid, those girls, because there was only one in the playground that could understand the form guide and the betting odds. To this day, I can still talk about a quaddie or a quinella. I can still sit down, read the form guide and give you the best quinella picks you've got. My partner laughs about it. He didn't grow up in a house like that. I still have a cathartic feeling when I hear the racing channel—which is bizarre and odd and shouldn't be the case—because I heard it so much as a young child. My point is, whereas I was the only one in the playground, what we now have, because of the changing nature between sport and wagering, is more children talking about sporting odds and more children seeing it normalised.

There was a period when you'd watch a rugby league match and heroes of rugby league in the eighties and nineties were doing a live cross and talking to people, saying, 'If you go to your betting app right now'—whichever one they were promoting—'you can put money on, you can get the odds about the first kick and who's going to get the first goal'—

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