Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We all arrive in this place because we want to make a difference. We come in here as one of 150 members of parliament, and we strive to make our country a better place. I've advocated for a vast range of issues since I arrived here in 2016, but one particular issue that I'm proud to have acted on—in fact, to have fought against—is the alarmingly high rate of gambling addiction. Gambling addiction is a curse in Australia. The economic toll of gambling is equally staggering. Australians are losing more than $25 billion a year to gambling, leading the world in per capita losses. The everyday Australian knows this. We're addicted to gambling, whether it be in person or online, and it's only getting worse.

Australian governments can act to stop this addiction and to end the curse. Curiously, we have a history of governments not acting strongly enough. I'm proud to have led the way in the fight against gambling in my own electorate of Fisher. I fought against the building of a casino on the Sunshine Coast, and I'm very proud to have led the finally victorious battle.

It was soon after my election that there was a proposal to allow the construction of a casino on the Sunshine Coast. I began a petition in 2017, calling on the Sunshine Coast Council, which owns the CBD site where it was going to be built. The Sunshine Coast Daily agreed that the coast was no place for a casino. I held many listening posts all over my electorate and received overwhelming, direct feedback from local residents stating that they did not want to see a casino on the Sunshine Coast. This, along with the great many individual conversations I had with local residents on the subject, convinced me that the overwhelming majority of people who live on the coast opposed this threatened casino development and they wanted me to fight to do whatever I could to prevent it going ahead. As we know from other Australian cities with a casino, it would have almost absolutely attracted organised crime gangs, who use casinos to launder money, and would have led to increased family breakdowns.

There are numerous studies that look at the impact of gambling, and all of them report that gambling is a huge, troubling and growing problem. Last week I was able to attend an important roundtable on gambling harm. The roundtable demonstrated once again the importance of this issue, especially the worrying connection between sport and gambling.

It breaks my heart—Mr Speaker, you're about the same vintage as me. When we were kids, we'd exchange football cards. We had our favourite players. We'd know who'd won. We'd know who was the good, the great or the not-so-great. But kids these days seem to be incapable of distinguishing gambling from sport. That really upsets me because it demonstrates to me and so many other people that these gambling companies have infiltrated the lives of our children such that they cannot differentiate between sport and gambling. I think that that is a travesty.

According to polling conducted by the Alliance for Gambling Reform—and I want to send a shout-out to the Reverend Tim Costello; you are an absolute legend—more than 70 per cent of Australians believe there is too much gambling advertising in sport and want it to be banned. After almost every NRL or AFL grand final, I get emails from parents saying, 'When are you guys going to ban gambling ads?'

Online gambling ads are relentless, whether you're watching your favourite team play on TV, mindlessly scrolling through social media or even trying to scan an important document. On what you thought was a credible app, up come flashy, high-octane gambling ads that are almost impossible to skip. 'You bet big, you win big,' yadda, yadda, yadda. We have to do more to protect, particularly, young children from gambling. I did a report in this place in 2020, Protecting the age of innocence. We've got to stop kids from gambling before they turn 18.