Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand that it is the wish of the House to debate this order of the day concurrently with the National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026. There being no objection, the chair will allow the course to be followed.

Renee Coffey (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Gambling has harmed too many Australian families for too long. When I was first elected last year, a mother from my community came to see me in my electorate office in Griffith. She told me that her husband had been gambling behind her back and without her knowledge. He had lost all their money. Everything they had was gone, and his gambling had left their family deep in debt. She had trusted her husband, with whom she had built a life and a family. He had hidden his gambling from her, and she discovered the truth after the damage was already done. She had since left the marriage and was raising their children. She now carried the work of rebuilding their lives after gambling had torn through their finances, their home and their sense of security. She brought something with her to our meeting; out of her bag, she produced the jersey of her young son's favourite football team. On the back was one of the team's sponsors; it was a gambling company. She held up her little boy's jersey and said: 'We can do better than this. We must do better than this.'

That meeting moved me deeply and it has stayed with me. I found this story very hard to speak about then, and I still do. She came with her child's sports jersey and the painful truth of what gambling had done to her family. She was trying to give her children stability after choices made and hidden by somebody else. Then she saw the gambling industry claim a place on the back of her son's jersey. It represented the industry connected to the loss, debt and betrayal that her family had endured. No child should grow up thinking gambling is a necessary link to the team or sport they love or behind every sporting hero they may admire as a role model. That mother turned a painful family experience into a call for change. She asked her representative to act so other families face less harm.

I went to Canberra and spoke with my colleagues about her story and about gambling reform more broadly. Many people across Griffith have shared their own experiences with me since that meeting. I've heard from locals in meetings and conversations. My office has received so many emails about gambling advertising and the harm gambling has caused. I have read all those emails. I have listened to stories of debt secrecy, broken trust and the long work of recovery, grandparents frightened for their grandchildren and adult children scared for their gambling-addicted parents. Each story is personal but each carries a clear request to us: people want their government to act.

Today I am proud to support reforms that answer those calls. These bills are a solid step, shaped by people who spoke up and asked us to do better and to do more. Australians love playing sport, and watching it and sharing it with our families. Yet gambling promotion now appears during broadcasts around the ground, across the screens, in our hands and, yes, on uniforms.

The main bill, the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill, takes direct action to break that connection. From January next year, wagering ads will be banned during live television coverage of sport between 6 am and 8.30 pm. Broadcasters will face a ban on showing the odds during those events. Outside live sport, television can carry no more than three gambling ads each hour between 6 am and 8.30 pm. That cap is needed. In 2024, Australians could see as many as eight gambling ads in a single hour. Radio ads will be banned during school drop-off and pick-up times, removing gambling promotions from the daily school run. The main bill will remove gambling advertising from sporting venues and uniforms. The ban covers players, officials, training, press conferences, amateur competitions and grassroots sports. The reforms will ban athletes, celebrities and social media influencers from promoting gambling. These promotions often target young Australians, particularly young men, and that is something I have heard through my office again and again. A gambling company cannot pay a familiar face to carry its message into a young person's feed, regardless of the platform or numbers of followers.

The main bill will place strong restrictions on online gambling advertising. The rules will cover social media, news websites, podcasts, streaming services, YouTube and search engines. An online service can show a gambling ad only to logged-in users aged over 18 who have a clear option to opt out. A platform that cannot meet all these conditions cannot show gambling ads at any time or to any person. This gives Australians a power they currently do not have, ensuring they can prevent gambling ads on their screens. Parents can open a streaming service with their children without gambling promotions appearing between programs. People recovering from harm can use the internet without targeted promotions pursuing them. Our laws must meet that reality. The purpose is straightforward. Australians should be able to control what gambling advertising they see, where they see it and how it reaches them. Advertising restrictions form one part of this reform package.

The two bills will strengthen practical support for people who want to stop gambling. BetStop is the national self-exclusion register. It lets a person exclude themself from every Australian licensed online and telephone wagering service through one registration. More than 61,000 Australians have used BetStop since its launch in 2023. The statutory review found that only one in four Australians knew BetStop existed. Among people who had placed a bet during the previous year, awareness reached only one in three. A service can only help those who know about it.

The government will run a national campaign to raise awareness of BetStop. The National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill supports the department to recover the cost of promoting this service. The online wagering industry should meet the cost of telling Australians about a service designed to protect them from gambling harm. The reforms will strengthen the register itself. A person's choice to stop marketing calls must cover emails, text messages, apps and push notifications. A person who chooses self-exclusion has drawn a clear boundary. Self-exclusion takes courage, and our system must honour that choice.

The bill will give the Australian Communications and Media Authority stronger tools against illegal offshore gambling services. These operators sit outside Australian law and our consumer protections. More than 1,700 illegal gambling websites have been blocked since 2019, but operators can change names, sites and payment methods quickly. Financial institutions will have to block transfers to accounts linked to illegal operators. The regulator can share information with those institutions for that task.

Search engines, app providers and other digital services will have to block access to illegal gambling services and their advertising. The regulator will gain the power to issue 24-hour takedown notices to digital services and influencers promoting those operators. A legal provider should not reach Australians through a sponsored search result, an app store or a paid social media post. Australians who choose to gamble online deserve the protections set by Australian law. Offshore businesses cannot avoid those rules that target people here.

The bill will ban online Keno. These products have earned the name 'pocket pokies' for good reason. They combine rapid draws, repeated play and high spending limits on a phone that rarely leaves a person's side. A person can lose $1,000 every three minutes. This is a high-speed gambling product built for repeated losses. Parliaments have spent years confronting the harm caused by poker machines. We cannot allow a version of that harm to move into every pocket in every home. The ban draws a clear line.

The ban will close loopholes used by foreign matched lotteries. These businesses offer Australians access to overseas lotteries through a middleman. They claim to buy a ticket overseas, collect any prize and pass the winnings to the Australian customer. The promise carries serious risks. Overseas authorities can refuse these purchases, leaving an Australian customer with no practical path to recover a prize. Foreign matched lotteries take sales from regulated Australian lotteries. Australian lotteries support newsagents, pharmacies, pubs, RSLs, community clubs and state services. The bill will protect consumers from unclear overseas arrangements and back local small business.

The bill will close gaps used by fake trade promotion lotteries. Genuine trade promotions support real goods and services. Fake models use discounts or membership clubs as a thin cover for selling lottery entries. Some operators lack the licences required under state law. Winners can discover that the promised prize is out of reach, and the damage reaches beyond those entrants. Charity lotteries estimate that fake lotteries diverted more than $60 million from the charity sector in 2024. That $60 million represents funding taken away from charities and the communities they serve.

Charity fundraising helps pay for health research, disability support, crisis services and local community programs. Every dollar diverted to a fake lottery is money a genuine charity cannot use for that work. For smaller organisations, lost income can mean less community outreach or a program reaching fewer people. Staff and volunteers must stretch limited funds further, and people seeking help feel the impact. Fake lotteries compete for the same public goodwill and household dollars. They risk weakening trust in the genuine charity fundraising sector. Closing this loophole will protect income charities used to support people and communities, like my community of Griffith.

These reforms build on the action the Albanese government has delivered. We banned the use of credit cards for online wagering. We launched BetStop. We stopped gambling companies claiming the research and development tax incentive. We put further protections in place through the National Consumer Protection Framework for Online Wagering. This bill takes the next steps. It reduces advertising, strengthens self-exclusion, disrupts illegal operators and bans harmful new products. No Australian government has brought forward gambling reforms of this breadth. The scale reflects a clear public expectation that governments must act.

The government has listened throughout the legislative process. We will keep working with members and senators in good faith to pass the strongest workable package. Evidence before last week's Senate inquiry exposed deeply troubling alleged conduct involving inducements. Our government condemns those alleged actions in the strongest terms. We have heard the community concern. The Prime Minister has flagged government amendments, and we are working to strengthen protections around inducements.

Some members believe this bill should go further. We hear that view, and the work continues through the parliament. These reforms are a strong step in the right direction. They set firm rules and give families more control. The work to reduce gambling harm must continue.

I also want to acknowledge Labor branch members across the country who helped place gambling reform on the ALP national platform for the first time. The platform recognises the heightened risk faced by children and young people. It commits Labor to stronger safeguards around inducements. I call on every member and senator to work in good faith so these reforms can begin on 1 January 2027.

Good public policy begins with listening to people who live with the consequences. I think again of that mother who came into my office. She trusted me with a deeply painful part of her life and asked her representative to do better. Her advocacy travelled from our community to this parliament, and I thank her. Her voice is present in this debate, and her son's jersey has not been forgotten. I thank every person in Griffith who has spoken with me or written to my office about gambling harm. I have listened and I will carry their voices into this parliament. I will continue to do that. I acknowledge the advocates, financial counsellors, researchers and service workers who push for reform.

I also pay tribute to the late Peta Murphy, a valued member of this House and a determined advocate for gambling harm reduction. Peta chaired the inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on people experiencing harm. Her work helped build the case for change. I'm saddened that I never had the opportunity to meet Peta before her passing, but I am grateful for the work she did in this parliament and in our country.

From 1 January next year, Australian families should be able to watch their favourite team without a flood of gambling ads. Children should see their sporting heroes play without a betting company on their jersey. People who do not want gambling promotion should have a clear choice online. People seeking to stop gambling should know where to turn. Every gambling company must respect the decision, across every marketing channel. These bills will protect children, give families more control and strengthen support for people experiencing gambling harm. They will tackle illegal operators and dangerous products. They will protect Australian consumers, charities and small businesses. These reforms are a very good step in the right direction. No single law can repair every family harmed by gambling, but this parliament can reduce that harm and prevent more of it.

Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) | Link to this | Hansard source

When it comes to gambling reform, Australians haven't just been left waiting; they've been left exposed. This government hasn't been slow; it has been completely missing in action, and delay has been the Prime Minister's policy. That's why, after three years of this delay, deflection and deception from this government, Australians were entitled to expect serious, workable reform to reduce gambling harm. Unfortunately, the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 does not yet meet that test.

The coalition recognises the enormous toll gambling addiction can take on individuals and families. We support sensible measures to reduce gambling harm. We support protecting children. There is nothing more important than a government's role in protecting children, and we support stronger protections for vulnerable Australians. Reform must be evidence based and carefully designed and actually work. The coalition approaches this issue from three fundamental principles: first, Australians should have choice; second, the principle of personal responsibility; and, third, government has an obligation to protect vulnerable Australians, particularly children, from exploitation and harm. On that test, this bill in its current form has serious deficiencies.

Last week, the Senate inquiry heard disturbing evidence about practices being used to target vulnerable gamblers, yet inducements are ignored by this bill. If companies are deliberately targeting people displaying signs of problem gambling with increasingly aggressive incentives to keep betting, that deserves serious attention. There are also significant concerns about the treatment of gambling advertising around children's sport. Sport is family time. Australians love to share time together, watching their favourite sport. It is part of our nation's joy. Children should be able to enjoy that without gambling being unnecessarily pushed into that experience.

When it comes to live sport streamed online, the existing five-minute blackout before and after live sport between 5 am and 8.30 pm would disappear for online streaming. That is not strengthening protection. In important respects, it risks weakening protections already in place. The Prime Minister should stop pretending this government invented the ban on gambling advertising during live sport. It was the former coalition government that introduced the broadcast and online restrictions on gambling advertising around live sport in 2018, and it was the coalition that legislated BetStop the National Self-Exclusion Register.

The coalition has made it clear that we cannot support this bill in its current form, but we are engaging constructively with the government to strengthen it. Discussions are continuing between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition and between the communications minister and the shadow minister. We want Australians to know that their concerns are being heard. That includes Australians harmed by gambling. It includes parents concerned about what their children see. Every parent is concerned about that. But it also includes Australians who responsibly enjoy a bet, a Saturday at the races or buying a lottery ticket. For the overwhelming majority, gambling is entertainment.

We should not pretend that legitimate wagering and racing industries do not matter economically. Thoroughbred racing alone contributes more than $13 billion in economic activity and supports more than 100,000 jobs, with more than half of those jobs in regional Australia. Those are trainers, breeders, jockeys, stable workers, veterinarians, transport operators and small businesses. Poorly designed legislation can have real consequences for those communities. We can protect vulnerable Australians and children while preserving choice.

The government had more than three years to get this right. Unfortunately, this bill falls short, despite all the time and pressure that they have had to make a decision. The coalition will continue negotiating in good faith to strengthen it. We want legislation that genuinely protects vulnerable Australians, strengthens safeguards around children's sport, deals with predatory practices and preserves choice, competition and fairness. That is the reform that Australians deserve.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Louise Francis, in a paper she wrote on 5 March 2026, said that, when she started her research into gambling and its adverse effects in 2014, the annual gambling losses in Australia were $21 billion. Today, she said, it was $31.5 billion. A decade ago, it was $1,200 per adult, and she made the point that it had jumped per capita to more than $1,500. The Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, of which I was a member, published a report in June 2023, ably chaired by Peta Murphy, the former member for Dunkley. The report was titled You win some, you lose more. I want to quote from the first paragraph of the foreword:

'You win some, you lose more.' This government tagline on gambling advertising, adopted as part of the National Consumer Protection Framework, aptly sums up the evidence received during this inquiry. If the status quo of online gambling regulation, including but not limited to advertising, was to continue Australians would continue to lose more—more money, more relationships, more love of sport for the game rather than the odds.

Later on in the foreword, it says this:

Australians outspend the citizens of every other country on online gambling. This is wreaking havoc in our communities. Saturation advertising ensures our future losses.

In addition—and Peta Murphy made the point—it says:

I am proud to say this Committee has delivered a unanimous report that says, "enough is enough". The Committee has made 31 recommendations that apply a public health lens to online gambling to reduce harm across the whole Australian population.

I was a member of that committee. I support the 31 recommendations and don't resile for one minute from those recommendations, but I'm pleased to say I'm pleased to speak on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 and the related National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026.

Through these bills, we are taking action in relation to the harm of online gambling. We have put forward a detailed package of significant reforms in terms of gambling. We focus on passing and implementing with the support of other members and senators. We hope to get this legislation through, having had and being in the process of negotiations and discussions, and we are taking seriously our responsibility to protect Australians, particularly children and young people, from the harms of online gambling.

We know Australians love their sport, and we're a sporting nation. You see that from world cups to the Olympics and Paralympics. Indeed, my community of Ipswich is a famous sporting nursery. Whether it's rugby league, football, hockey, AFL, cricket or athletics, we're sports mad in Ipswich. What started as having an occasional punt has, over time, grown to be an industry that's taken over our sport, our TVs and our lives, and it's got to stop.

People in my electorate want to be able to sit down and watch sport and their favourite show without being hammered with gambling ads and betting odds, either on TV or online. They should be able to sit down and enjoy a program with their families without being bombarded by betting odds. Gambling should not be normalised for children. Children should not be taught gambling is integral to sport, and, just as we've introduced world-leading minimum-age social media restrictions for children, parents want to know that their kids aren't being exposed to gambling ads online.

Sadly, gambling touches too many Australian families and individuals. Its impact doesn't stop with the person who's addicted to gambling. The reality is, for every person experiencing gambling harm, around six others—family, friends, workmates and loved ones—can also feel the effects through financial pressure, stress and strained relationships. I've seen the devastating impact on families and have personally witnessed it in my own family. Behind every statistic is a person and a family. It's clear the advertising restrictions haven't kept pace with the community expectations, so these reforms are about attempting to fix this by reducing gambling harm and making sure our children grow to love sport for the game and don't see gambling as an essential part of it.

The reforms have a couple of pieces of legislation. As I said, there are a couple of bills. The Albanese government is delivering protections from the harms of gambling for Australians, particularly for children and young people. The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill contains some of the strongest measures ever brought in by any government. It delivers our commitment in relation to severing that connection between wagering and sport, minimising children's exposure to gambling advertising and stopping saturation of wagering ads on TV, radio and online.

There are restrictions on gambling advertising on TV to no more than three ads each hour from six am to 8.30 pm, with a complete ban across and during live sport broadcasting during those hours, and restrictions on gambling ads from online platforms, unless people have logged on in account and are over 18 and have the option to opt out of gambling advertising. We're banning gambling ads on radio during school drop offs and pick-up times and banning the use of athletes, celebrities or influencers to promote wagering. We're banning the broadcasting of ads promoting sporting odds and banning gambling ads in sporting venues and on players' and officials' uniforms, and we're cracking down on illegal gambling operators by allowing banks and payment systems to block transactions and give the Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, more powers to block these websites and to act faster to do so.

As part of these reforms, online keno pocket pokies and foreign matching lotteries will be banned. The bill also defines and regulates trade promotion services, to protect Australians from dodgy operators and to protect small businesses like newsagencies, and genuine lotteries, and charities who give back to the local community. We're acting to protect people from the iniquitous practices that get people towards addiction.

These changes would enhance sport integrity and reduce financial crime risks, as well as addressing harm. These reforms are about getting the balance right. We want Australians to be in control of what gambling ads they see and where and how they see them. The changes are proposed to come in on 1 January next year. From then, Australians will be able to sit down with their families and cheer on their favourite team without being bombarded by gambling advertising. As for kids, we want them to grow up without thinking that you have a punt when you watch the Broncos play on TV.

In addition, the legislation introduces reforms to strengthen BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, recognising the critical role it plays in vulnerable Australians' self-exclusion from gambling. To that end, this bill, along with the National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026, ensures that the government can recover the costs of strengthening BetStop. That was a key recommendation of the statutory review of BetStop, helping to drive uptake of this essential service which has already seen 64,500 registrations by the end of June.

It's worth noting that the measures in this bill complement and build on the reforms the government has previously introduced. As part of these, we've launched BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, which has been used by more than 59,000 Australians, with 38 per cent of those opting for a self-imposed lifetime ban. We've legislated a ban on the use of credit cards in online wagering, because people shouldn't be able to bet with money they don't have and get themselves into hock. We've also established a mandatory pre-verification process to prevent children and people who have self-excluded from placing an online bet.

On top of this, the May budget included some funding for financial counselling for gambling and a new public awareness campaign. The budget will double the number of people who can get help through gambling financial counselling, while the new information campaign will mean more Australians will know about the gambling harms and where to get help.

I've seen the benefit of this funding in my own electorate, with a number of organisations receiving Albanese government funding to help people in Ipswich to access financial counselling, including people facing financial hardship due to gambling. In fact, last year these providers received a total of $98.4 million over five years for financial wellbeing support. For example, I met with the financial counsellors from the Ipswich Salvos Moneycare financial counselling service, who received funding to continue the valuable work they do in assisting locals with debts and gambling problems. Each Ipswich is another local provider which provides targeted support with gambling, and they deliver high quality financial services to people experiencing gambling harm and link them to addiction and mental health support when they need it. As a government, we're funding these local services, like Salvos Moneycare and Each Ipswich, to try to address and support people through their recovery and in taking back control of their lives.

Ideally, we want to prevent gambling harm from happening in the first place, and that's what the reforms in the bills are about. We've had constructive discussions with the coalition, the Greens and the crossbenchers, and those discussions will continue in good faith. At the same time, we've consulted widely, and wisely, I think, in listening to a range of views across the community. We've sat down and worked constructively with the antigambling sector and with commercial broadcasters and with sporting organisations, to make sure that we can minimise harm and that these reforms are practical and can be implemented. That's what good governments do. Based on those consultations, we're looking to strengthen the reforms and there will be government amendments to these bills.

We're making sure that all these issues are dealt with in a constructive way. Last week's Senate inquiry into the bills included some damning evidence around some of the worst forms of inducement, and the government condemns those alleged actions in the strongest possible terms.

This particular legislation is really critical. That's why listening to the community is vital as well.

We acknowledge the contribution of rank-and-file Labor Party members to the national platform, which, for the first time, recognised our significant efforts on gambling reform. Our national platform is almost a spiritual thing in the Labor Party. Quite rightly, it recognised that children and young people have a heightened risk of being exposed to gambling harm and made a commitment to strengthen measures around inducements.

Again, we thank Labor Party branch members for their valuable input into these important reforms. I also thank all those people in my electorate who've consulted me about them. We keep negotiating and hope that they'll say more about this and have some practical amendments to these bills, including curbing advertising, particularly to children. In the meantime, I call on members in this place to work constructively with us. These reforms are good. It represents the most significant reforms to online gambling in Australia's history and will continue to minimise children's exposure and break that link between sporting and wagering. It's a major step forward, and I think the parliament should vote for it. On a practical level, many of the reforms have a 1 January start date next year, so it's important that we pass these measures this year.

Finally, I want to acknowledge someone who's not here with us but looms large over this legislation. That's the late former member for Dunkley, Peta Murphy. Peta was a very decent and hugely intelligent and powerful advocate, both for her community and on important national issues like gambling harm reduction. She was a hard-working local member but a brilliant parliamentarian as well and would have served, I have no doubt, as a cabinet minister in a future Labor government. I had the privilege of working with her in a number of parliamentary inquiries, including the 2023 inquiry of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs into online gambling and its impact, and she chaired that brilliantly.

As someone whose father was an alcoholic—my dad was an alcoholic and had a terrible gambling addiction—I personally experienced the horrors of online and gambling addiction. I've been through a number of gambling inquiries. I remember Bill Shorten and Jenny Macklin both ringing me up when I was in Toogoolawah one day and asking me to be on inquiries that have been chaired by crossbenchers in relation to gambling in a variety of different forms. I've been on those inquiries, and I can say that the outcomes of those inquiries have varied in terms of the recommendations and the government's implementation, but not this one.

Peta was incredibly inquisitive, investigative and forensic during the inquiry and right across the detail. She took it very seriously and worked assiduously and patiently to get everyone together on the final report, You win some, you lose more. It has a very strong public-health focus rather than a personal choice focus, and she got it right. We got it right in that inquiry. That's why the package of reforms in this bill have been carefully developed, with harm minimisation front of mind and with a health focus as well. It's clear Peta's report has had a significant impact, including the strong measures we've put together today. These are meaningful reforms which I support and hope we will go further. Some of the strongest actions to date we've ever seen a government do has been done by this government, and I commend the Prime Minister and the various ministers who've been involved in it.

We are tackling the scourge of online gambling, but we can do much more. One of the best things we should do in terms of honouring Peta Murphy's legacy would be to pass these bills now, and I commend them to the House.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

Every day, Australians are exposed to a relentless stream of gambling ads. The gambling industry does not spend hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising every year because it has no effect. They do it because it works. Studies show a clear and consistent link between gambling ads and gambling activity and, consequently, gambling harm. Not all gambling is harmful. It's a legal activity that many Australians enjoy safely, and banning gambling advertising does not mean banning gambling. This is not about those who enjoy having a flutter now and then, perhaps on the grand final, the Eurovision winner or even at the Dederang races and other wonderful country carnivals.

I grew up as a kid on a racetrack. My grandfather owned and trained racehorses. Back then, though, there were no inducements or advertisements flooding our screens. It wasn't possible to lose thousands of dollars in a few taps of a smartphone without leaving home or without even talking to another human being. Online gambling is a completely different beast, and we know that for some Australians it is incredibly harmful. From March last year to March this year, we lost $36 billion to gambling. Our per capita losses are the highest in the world. In my own home state of Victoria, gambling cost us more than $14 billion in 2023, and that includes the direct financial impacts as well as the wider costs of things like job losses, divorce, family violence, police and court processes, and physical and mental health care.

As the Murphy report laid out in heartbreaking detail, gambling losses have a massive human cost. Australians experiencing gambling harm are significantly more likely to experience physical and mental health issues. Gambling is linked to a fourfold increase in the risk of suicide. Family violence is three times more likely to occur alongside harmful gambling. We know that, for every person experiencing gambling harm, six more are directly affected. Husbands, wives, children, parents, colleagues, friends and communities all suffer. Gambling harm is, most certainly, a deeply serious public health issue that has become normalised through constant exposure. Gambling ads sell false hopes, easy wins and good times that obscure the very real and significant damage that gambling addiction can cause. And that's why the Murphy report recommended a complete ban on gambling ads and inducements.

Again, I want to be clear. This is not about banning gambling. It's not about telling people what they're allowed to do. Adults can and will continue to make their own choices. Make no mistake: this is about greed. This is about whether we allow multimillion-dollar companies to boost their profits by bombarding us with ads and inducements for a product that we know—and they know—causes profound devastation. It's about the greed of recruiting our children. This is a massive and most pernicious public health problem.

I acknowledge that there are concerns from media organisations and sporting codes about the potential effect on their financial viability if we were to ban advertising for gambling. However, these concerns must be balanced against the rights of the community, and especially children, to be protected from harm. Young Australians are growing up associating sport, entertainment and gambling as though they naturally belong together. Of course, we've heard these arguments before, when tobacco companies tried to convince us that our sporting codes would die out without their advertising and sponsorship, or when alcohol companies claimed the industry would collapse if we put a small warning about the dangers of drinking during pregnancy on bottles and cans. But you know what? I've got faith in the ability of Australian sports and media to evolve, to adapt and to have a business model that is not dependent on gambling advertising.

The Murphy report laid out a comprehensive action plan to address gambling harm, including the immediate phased introduction of an ad ban. If the government had acted on that recommendation, the process would be complete. Online gambling advertising and sponsorship would already be banned. Instead, more than three years later, we've been presented with a tepid and frankly insulting imitation of real action. The problem is clear. The expert evidence is unanimous. The Australian public is screaming for action. If ever we have needed a social licence to do something important and radical, then we've got it. Yet this parliament has not acted, and the government has refused to take up these recommendations from the Murphy report in full. I am concerned about the effect of inducements on individual gamblers, and I have to wonder, really, about the effect of inducements to political parties who take political donations from gambling companies. We have real problems with trust in government, in this country and across the world, and we have to look at an issue such as that.

Despite the Murphy report's unequivocal conclusion that partial bans do not work, this bill establishes a complicated maze of half-measures and exceptions. Gambling advertising is banned in some instances, at some times of day, for some kinds of programs, on some kinds of platforms. If you want to know whether your children are about to be exposed to gambling ads, you need to work through a multistep checklist: What time of day is it? Which platform are we on? Whose account is logged in? How many ads have already been shown in the last 59 minutes? It shouldn't be that difficult. The answer should simply be no.

One of the most frustrating things about this legislation is the unnecessary complexity of these advertising restrictions. In trying to include so many loopholes, carve-outs and compromises, the government has created an unfathomably complex regime. In some cases, these amendments may actually weaken existing protections, allowing the broadcast of more ads during live sports than would currently be permitted. I mean, go figure. It makes the government's approach even more baffling. It would have been so much easier to just implement a comprehensive ban.

As well as the limited and, frankly, inadequate reforms to advertising, this bill makes some other changes to gambling regulation, including: additional restrictions on illegal gambling, including new requirements for financial institutions to prevent related payments and transfers; improvements to the BetStop legislative framework in line with recommendations from the recent statutory review; and prohibition of online keno and foreign match lotteries. Well, these are small but welcome improvements but, unfortunately, there's a lot more this bill chooses not to do.

Despite the Murphy report's finding that they are a significant incubator of harm, the bill does not ban inducements. Bonuses and two-for-one deals might be okay in a supermarket aisle but they have no place as a tool to exploit people at risk of gambling harm because, let's be clear, these promotions are not intended to keep you winning. If you're making money from online gambling, you'll get kicked off the platform, not flown to the Gold Coast. Gambling companies offer inducements as a calculated investment in the continued suffering of their most vulnerable customers. Make no mistake about that.

Just last week we heard extraordinary testimony about the lengths to which gambling companies will go to make sure that people keep losing money. Like the rest of Australia, I was absolutely gobsmacked by Luke Bateman's evidence about being offered flights, accommodation, alcohol and even illegal drugs. But the truly predatory nature of inducements was also illustrated by Russell Northe, who described repeatedly being offered inducements after—after!—closing his accounts. Russell knew he was in trouble. He took steps to protect himself, and the gambling companies sought to actively undermine that. It is unconscionable.

The bill also does not establish a gambling regulator despite the Murphy report identifying a glaring need for a national regulatory framework overseen by a dedicated body with the sole objective of reducing harm. It reflects the reality that gambling companies operate nationally and should be regulated nationally. Right now, responsibility is fragmented across multiple regulators, different resources, powers and enforcement, and they face varying levels of criticism, some of it scathing. A regulator established for the sole purpose of reducing harm would, in the words of the Murphy report, 'put people above profits and public health before commercial interests'.

Members of the crossbench have suggested a number of amendments to the bill, all of them seeking to bring it closer to being something that offers real protections from gambling harm. Consistent with the Murphy report, I will be voting to implement a full ban on advertising, a full ban on inducements and the establishment of a dedicated national regulator. I notice the crossbench, not the government nor the opposition, is carrying the torch for the Murphy report, an inquiry that was grounded in the lived experience of people whose lives were devastated by this predatory industry practice.

I've also circulated two small, reasonable amendments to improve the bill: firstly, a complete ban on gambling ads during G-rated television programming. Ratings are designed to help viewers make informed choices about what they and their families watch, and a G rating indicates a program is suitable for all ages, including very young children. A G rating is a green light for a family friendly viewing, and that shouldn't change when the ad break starts. Secondly, I'm proposing a requirement for gambling companies to collect and publicly report on harm indicators, including aggregate customer losses, self-exclusion requests and complaints. It's information they already have and it would provide a vital evidence base to help understand whether these reforms are effective in reducing and preventing gambling harm. If this bill results in only limited improvement to industry practice then the data will be even more important when it comes to reviewing our laws in the years to come.

It's been widely reported that there will be further changes to this bill. In its current form, the bill is unpassable, so it seems the government will be dragged kicking and screaming to take stronger action to get it through the parliament. I can't speak to any government amendments at this point because they haven't been circulated. So often in this place we're dealing with problems that don't have an obvious solution. This is not one of those times. The evidence couldn't be clearer. Everyone in Australia except the gambling companies and apparently this government knows what needs to be done. Since this bill was introduced, I have received hundreds of emails from people in my electorate who are not just disappointed that the government won't commit to a full ban; they are outraged. I've grappled with whether I should support this bill. It falls so far short of what we know is needed. As a legislator, I ask myself: when we know what good looks like, how low are we willing to set the bar? It's a very important consideration.

The Murphy report gave parliament a clear roadmap, but this bill has chosen a shortcut. Make no mistake: Australians will pay the price for that. In the time I've been speaking, Australians have lost more than half a million dollars to gambling. Just consider that. The clock is ticking. The opportunity is here. The moment is now. The time for courage is right before us, and I call on every member of this parliament to do the right thing: pass a law that fulfils the recommendations of the Murphy report and do the right thing for the Australian people.

Jo Briskey (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

There's no moment in an Australian football match you can't bet on: the result, the quarter, the margin, the next goal, the bloke who kicks it. The game has been carved up into markets the way a butcher works through a carcase, and every one of those markets is live while the ball is in the air. That didn't happen by accident and that didn't happen because we asked for it. That was built deliberately by an industry that clocked how our sport could be the most efficient distribution network it could get its hands on. And that has cost the country a great deal more than money.

For all the talk about apps and algorithms in this debate, gambling harm in Australia mostly wears the face of an adult: a man in his 50s who has not told his wife; a woman who has repaid the same debt three times over; someone who has lost a house, a business, a marriage or all three. It was done quietly because the shame attached to this particular harm keeps people silent longer than almost anything else that we deal with in this place. They are not weak people. They are not stupid people. They are people who have been sold a product engineered to take money from them by companies who measure success in exactly how much they can take. Every one of those stories begins in the same place—not with a bet, but with an advertisement.

My community is home to two of the most iconic racecourses in the country: Flemington and Moonee Valley. Between them they carry the better part of the Spring Racing Carnival, including the Melbourne Cup and the Cox Plate. On the first Tuesday of November, my community plays home to the race that stops the nation. The streets and businesses are buzzing, and a good many of my constituents either work the carnival or know someone who does.

Twenty years ago, having a punt on a race meant something fairly particular in this country. You had to go somewhere to do it. You had the space to make the choice: at the track or a TAB. You'd queue on a Sunday morning. You'd put your money down and then you'd wait, sometimes the better part of a week, for a race that took about three minutes. And, when the race was run, that was the end of it. Let's be clear: things have shifted substantially from being able to back a horse on cup day or have a punt on the weekend. The objection those of us have is what the betting industry has done to that tradition since. Australians didn't decide they wanted to bet more. What changed is that the industry worked out that it no longer needed the racecourse or the queue or the weekend, and, once it didn't need any of it, it no longer needed to wait for us either. You used to have to go find it. Now it finds you. Like the new cycle, it's 24/7.

And, having found us, it went where the crowds were. If you go to the footy on the weekend, like many in my community do, you'll count the ads: the logos on the boundary signs; the odds on the big screen at half-time in front of 80,000 people; the odds read through the commentary by the same voice calling the play or by a beloved champion of the game, so the market and the match arrive in the same sentence; the sponsor on the ground, on the ticket, on the apparel; then the ad break and then another ad break; and on the phone in the hand of the bloke two seats down, who has not looked up for about a quarter and a half. That's the quiet list, and it's non-stop. I think we can agree that it's not sport with advertising around it; it is a wagering product with a game of football inside it.

So the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 goes after exactly the place it lives. From 1 January next year, gambling advertising comes off television during all live sports within restricted hours and is capped outside them. It comes off the stadiums; it comes off the uniforms. Celebrities and athletes will no longer be able to lend their names to it, and neither will the influencers, because, when a young person is being sold a bet by someone they follow, someone they adore, someone they trust, they are not watching an advertisement; they're taking advice from a mate. And it will come off the radio at school drop-off and pick-up, because those are hours we know children are captive in the back seat of the car, and this industry worked that out long before we did.

But the ground and the broadcast are only the start of it, because most of this advertising now reaches kids and parents somewhere else entirely: on the phone in their pocket. So the ban goes online—social media, news sites, streaming podcasts and search engines. And it will be up to the platforms to put these restrictions in place, because they, too, carry the responsibility. Any platform that will not put these restrictions in place will lose the right to carry gambling advertising altogether—at any hour, to any user.

This bill goes after the products that are online too. We are banning online keno, rapid draws, high frequency, high limits and $1,000 gone in just three minutes. That is pokies in your pocket, and there is no version of that that is safe. We are also shutting down foreign-matched lotteries, which sell Australians a ticket in an overseas draw nobody overseas is obliged to honour. And we are closing the loophole on fake trade-promotion lotteries, schemes with no product behind them, which charity lotteries estimate have pulled more than $60 million out of the Australian charity sector in a single year. That was money raised for people who need it.

That brings me to the Australians this industry has already hurt and what we owe them. BetStop has helped more than 61,000 people shut the door on gambling since 2023. That is 61,000 acts of courage. And this bill strengthens that register so that the moment somebody makes that decision, the marketing stops. That is the heart of this bill: backing Australians to make the choice about gambling that was never given to them when the industry ramped up its activities. But only one in four Australians knows about BetStop. Among people who have placed a bet in the last 12 months, it's one in three. A service that saves lives is of no use to the person who hasn't heard of it, so this government will run a national campaign to fix it. And we are moving on the illegal offshore operators who sit outside our consumer protections altogether.

I've got two young daughters, aged 12 and nine. I've spoken about them before in this chamber, most recently when our government passed our world-leading social media reforms. And I think of them during this debate, because we know young children, mostly teenagers, are the target. They're not being sold a bet. A nine-year old doesn't have money, and the industry knows that. What is being built is an 18-year-old—one who already knows the brands, already knows the language and already believes that a wager is a part of watching their team play. Children are not collateral damage in this business model; they are a pipeline. A company can wait 10 years for a customer. It will wait 10 years, unless this parliament stops it. That is the same principle that took this government to the minimum age for social media: when a company builds a business model off targeting children, we legislate to protect them.

Peta Murphy's name has been, and will continue to be, invoked many times in this debate, and it should be. She went after this industry with the same determination she brought to everything else that she cared about, and she did so whilst being very sick. I didn't get a chance to serve with Peta—I arrived after we lost her—but, like many in the Labor party, I had the great privilege of knowing her. In her first speech to this House, she told us that the hard things facing this country would require 'a willingness from all of us' to 'persist with complex debates' over sustained periods—certainly longer, she said, than any news cycle. She did not believe reform arrived in a single piece because somebody had shouted loudly enough. She believed you kept at it.

She said something else in that speech. She said she wanted to belong to a generation of politicians who rejected the politics of division and who refused to treat the problems of our society as weapons to wedge political opponents.

Peta was a proud Labor member who did this work inside a Labor government because she understood that is where things actually get done in this country. She persuaded members of every party in this place to sign up to tackle this issue. That is who she was. She kept at it and she wanted to bring people with her. Anyone reaching for her report as a weapon on this debate has picked up the wrong end of it.

This reform may be culminating in Canberra, but it didn't start here. There are people right across my community who have been making this argument for years, long before it was in the headlines and long before I was elected. They've not been shy with me since—and I wouldn't have it any other way, because they are the reason a bill of this size is in front of this House at all.

Our government is taking gambling advertising off the TV during all live sport within restricted hours and capping it outside of them; taking it off the stadiums, off the uniforms, off the radio when kids are in the car; and banning it across every platform online, with any platform that won't comply losing the right to run the ads at all. Keno—gone; the lottery rackets—gone. BetStop's being strengthened, with a national campaign to make sure people know it is there. This is the strongest action to tackle the harms of gambling that any government in Australia has ever undertaken.

The Prime Minister has been clear that further reform is coming and has flagged amendments to the bill, and I welcome that. At our party's national conference, rank and file members, including those in my local branches, put strengthening these protections in our party platform. I thank every one of them for doing that. It highlights our commitment as a movement to tackling this issue.

For most of our country's history, if an Australian wanted to have a bet they had to go and find one. This industry decided that they could find us instead: in our living rooms, in our sports stadiums, in our pockets and in the language our children now use about their own team. It did that without ever asking a single one of us whether we wanted it. It did it because nobody had drawn a line and told it to stop. This bill, for the first time, draws that line.

The bill will not undo what has already been done to the people in my community who have lost more than they can talk about. Nothing this parliament passes today or any other day will give that back. But it does mean that the kid who saves up for a jumper is not wearing a betting company on their chest. It means that the family sitting down to watch their team is not being marketed to between every bounce. It means that the next person who finds the courage to shut the door on something that is hurting them will not have it pushed back open by an advertisement they never asked to see.

This is not inadequate. It is the biggest action an Australian government has taken in this area, and it marks the beginning of the work we do to arrest the significant harms of problem gambling.

This bill has been a long time coming, and there are Australians who can't afford to wait through another season of it. To those opposite and to the crossbench: I implore you to work with us in good faith to pass this legislation, so that the next generation grows up with a love of the game and nothing else. I commend the bill to the House.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, I want to say that there are some subjects in the House that have bipartisan support. We all want to see the harm from gambling reduced. How that is done and what is implemented may or may not actually end up with that outcome. This is about outcomes. It should never be about the headline. The coalition, in good faith, has been working with the current government to ensure that we get the best bill forward.

As a social worker in my past life, I can never leave behind the impacts from things like gambling and other harms, other addictions, and how they impact families and homelessness. Gambling is a very serious issue. There are plenty of people in Australia who enjoy a punt, so I'm told. I personally don't go down that track myself, but there are plenty of people who do without causing them to lose their home or put their families in dire straits where there is no food on the table. But we must take those risks very, very seriously, and we do. Mallee residents have contacted me about gambling harm because it is impacting their families.

The central question is not whether gambling harm exists but whether the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 as it currently stands will effectively reduce that harm. I want to, as has occurred already in this first hour of debate, acknowledge the contribution of the late Peta Murphy, the prior member for Dunkley, and her incredible commitment to ensuring that gambling is dealt with in a serious and responsible manner by the government. The Murphy inquiry highlighted concerns about gambling harm, gambling advertising, impacts on children, consumer protections and illegal offshore gambling. Parliament owes it to every Australian to carefully consider those concerns. Parliament's responsibility is not merely to identify a problem—almost anyone can do that—but to implement solutions that actually work.

Gambling is no longer confined to pubs and the tabs. That's a fact. It's embedded in sport, phones, online streaming services, free-to-air TV, social media and sporting commentary. Children are discussing 'odds on' and 'odds off' while watching a football game. Why are Australian children learning the language of betting before they learn financial literacy? It's a really good question. The connection between sport and gambling has become culturally normalised, and we need to stop it.

I firstly want to acknowledge the positive elements that are in this bill. The advertising reforms that are put forward—restrictions around live sport, radio restrictions during school pick-up and drop-off, bans on athlete and celebrity endorsements, removal of gambling advertising from player uniforms and sporting venues, consumer protections, strengthening BetStop, and further action against illegal operators. The last thing we want to see, just like with vapes and the tobacco industry, is for illegal operators to take up this space. We also want to see a ban on online keno, the pocket pokies, and prohibition of foreign matched lotteries. There are elements of this bill that deserve support, but important concerns remain. In 2018 live sport gambling-advertising restrictions, the coalition showed that acting on gambling harm when practical reforms were needed worked. We introduced restrictions during live sport across free-to-air TV, radio, subscription TV and online streaming. What this bill gets wrong, however, is that, potentially, it may water down the gains from those reforms—for instance, when the coalition legislated restrictions during live sport or breaks in play or, importantly in the context of this, bill during children's programs from five am to 8.30 pm. This bill was simply set quotas of three ads per hour between six am and 8.30 pm, including during live sports. The restrictions during children's programming seem to disappear. Importantly, if there is an unscheduled break in play—for instance, when a goal is scored—arguably, gambling ads will be permitted at those times.

Coalition reforms also strengthened enforcement under the Interactive Gambling Act. Since then, more than 1,700 illegal gambling and affiliate websites have been blocked. More than 230 illegal operators have left the Australian market. Under the coalition in 2018, we introduced the National Consumer Protection Framework for Online Wagering, with No. 4 of the 10 reforms in that framework being on inducement, like bonus bets, sign-up bonuses, vouchers, credits, rewards, referral bonuses and the like. Those anti-inducement measures were introduced nationally in 2019 when the coalition was in government. In a moment, I'll also talk about how those inducement measures need to be strengthened, seven years from when the framework was implemented.

The foundations for BetStop and harm-minimisation measures have been bipartisan to reduce gambling harm. Coalition governments already established important foundations legislating the architecture for the likes of national self-exclusion register, BetStop, which launched in August 2023. BetStop, at last check, had over 30,000 registered users with about 23,000 exclusions active. I want to point out that that also involves people's choice and people's agency to make the choice to recognise that they have a problem and sign up to BetStop. We encourage and implore more and more Australians to do exactly that.

On the current bill, let's be clear that most viewing of what we once called television—now streaming—content is via logged-in users who are over 18 and able to opt out of gambling advertising. The coalition view is that we can move from opt out to opt in. Gambling advertising should only be received if an adult actively chooses to receive it. The merits of opt in are that it protects children and vulnerable Australians by default. It places responsibility on advertisers rather than consumers. It aligns with modern consent principles. It preserves adult choice. It's a middle ground between doing nothing and a complete ban. The practical challenges, of course, are age verification, privacy concerns, cross-platform implementation, smart TVs and connected devices, and offshore operators outside Australian jurisdiction. Australians should not have to spend their lives opting out of gambling advertising. The default setting should be protection.

Predatory inducements and duty of care have been raised in evidence to the Senate, in VIP programs, bonus bets and targeted inducements. We've seen quite a bit of that in the papers in this last week. What responsibility do operators owe customers who are exhibiting signs of addiction and harm? There is a duty of care to support consideration of a statutory duty of care. Identifying vulnerability, intervening early, reducing harm and acting before crisis occurs—harm reduction is not simply about advertisements; it's also about industry responsibility.

Offshore gambling, of course, remains the next big challenge. I want to acknowledge our support, on this side, and the work of ACMA—there have been 1,751 offshore sites blocked and 230-plus operators exited, as I said earlier. Many operators sit outside Australian jurisdiction. Examples cited in recent enforcement actions include operators associated with Curacao, the Union of Comoros, Costa Rica and Ireland. Enforcement is difficult. Websites change domains, mirror sites emerge, cryptocurrency can bypass traditional controls, and operators are internationally dispersed.

With regard to the pocket pokies—online keno—they illustrate the movement of casino-style gambling products onto smartphones. Foreign matched lotteries are an example of gambling products entering Australia from outside the traditional regulatory framework, and then, of course, there are the illegal offshore operators, which require stronger enforcement tools and international cooperation. Neil from my electorate says he agrees fully with me about offshore gaming sites. He says:

we should also be legislating to protect our children (and adults!!) from overseas gambling sites, or they will become the norm!!

Parliament can regulate Australian broadcasters and Australian bookmakers. It is much harder to regulate offshore operators. Reform should reduce harm, not simply push Australians into less regulated offshore markets.

I was pretty horrified, I have to say, to visit an RSL in my electorate and to see a 19-year-old, at nine o'clock in the morning, with his work shirt on, playing the pokies. He was clearly meant to be at work, but he was in there, at 19 years of age. To see that in front of your face is incredibly confronting. I know this bill doesn't go to that, but it goes point to gambling addiction and the harms that are for life if you can't get out of it. It's not abstract; it's about real people in every one of our electorates.

In conclusion, there are three overarching principles: adults should remain free to make lawful choices, children deserve stronger protection, and gambling providers should bear greater responsibility for reducing harm. The test of this legislation is not whether parliament passes it. The test is whether fewer Australian experience gambling harm in the future, whether fewer children grow up associating sport with betting, whether fewer vulnerable people are targeted with inducements and whether fewer Australians are drawn into the unregulated offshore gambling space.

Tom French (Moore, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026, and the related national self-exclusion register legislation. There is no point pretending that this bill is easy. It is controversial. Some believe the government have gone too far; others believe we have not gone nearly far enough. Broadcasters are concerned about revenue. Sporting organisations are concerned about sponsorship. Wagering companies point out that gambling is a lawful activity undertaken by adults. On the other side, many Australians look at the sheer volume of gambling advertising, particularly around sport, and ask how we allowed it to get this far. Parliament, ultimately, has to draw a line.

The question is not whether an adult Australian should be allowed to have a bet. They should. The question is whether we are comfortable with the place gambling has come to occupy in Australian life, particularly in the lives of our children. I am not. There is a generation of Australian kids growing up at a time when the odds can sometimes feel almost as much a part of watching sport as the score. They know the teams, they know the players, they know the ladder and, increasingly, they know which side is paying $2.10. Sport should not be an introductory course into wagering. A kid watching the footy should be thinking about the mark, the goal, the tackle and the player they want to be like when they run onto the oval on a Saturday. They should not be learning that every contest needs a price attached to it. That is at the heart of these bills.

The legislation restricts wagering advertising, strengthens action against illegal offshore gambling, improves BetStop and deals with emerging products like online Keno, foreign match lotteries and fake trade promotion lotteries. Its objectives are straightforward: break the connection between wagering and sport, reduce children's exposure to gambling advertising and reduce its saturation across television, radio and the internet. But there is a broader lesson here for corporate Australia: just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Every major company operating in this country relies, to some extent, on a social licence. Parliament sets the law, regulators set the rules but the community decides what conduct it will tolerate. Businesses that ignore those expectations for long enough should not be surprised when Australians eventually demand change.

We see that beyond gambling. Right now, in the Pilbara, electricians and signal workers from the Electrical Trades Union are taking action against BHP after a system developed where contractors and labour hire were used to compete against the direct workforce, putting downward pressure on wages and creating divisions between workers—all while the company was making enormous profits. A company can comply with the law and still lose the confidence of its workforce. It can make enormous profits while still losing the confidence of the community. It can win an argument with its lawyers and lose the much bigger argument with the Australian public. That is why there is considerable community support for the workers and unions taking action, and the gambling industry should understand exactly the same lesson.

I do not approach this debate as someone who believes gambling should be prohibited. My family owned hotels. We had poker machines. We operated the TAB. We had Keno. I grew up around licensed venues. I understand gambling has long been a part of the business model of pubs, clubs and other venues. Those businesses employ people. They support local organisations. They provide places where communities come together. I'm not going to pretend somebody putting a few dollars on the footy is automatically experiencing gambling harm. Adults can make choices themselves, but freedom of choice does not require us to give gambling companies unrestricted access to children and does not require Australians to accept gambling advertising being woven into sport.

For too long, parts of the wagering industry have pushed further and further—onto jerseys, around the grounds, through broadcasts, into social media and into the phones that people carry everywhere. Too many companies assumed that, because they were legally permitted to do it, Australians would continue accepting it. That was a mistake. They have been very good at returning money to shareholders, but they have been much less successful at explaining why Australians should accept gambling advertising being a constant part of Australian life. Social licence is not permanent; it has to be earned and maintained. Once it is lost, rebuilding it is considerably harder.

That brings us to what the main bill does. On television, wagering advertising will be prohibited during live sport between 6 am and 8.30 pm. Outside live sport, gambling advertising will be capped at three advertisements per hour during those times. On radio, wagering advertising will be banned during school drop-off and pick-up periods. The bill also tackles the connection between gambling and sporting culture itself. Wagering advertising will be banned from sporting uniforms and sporting venues. Athletes, celebrities and influencers will be prohibited from promoting wagering products. Broadcast promotion of odds will also be prohibited. That is important because advertising has changed. Young Australians do not consume media in the same way previous generations did. They are on social media, streaming services, YouTube, podcasts and whatever platform comes next. An influencer speaking into a phone can reach hundreds of thousands of young Australians. The law needs to reflect that. The online rules are therefore particularly important.

The starting point is that gambling advertising online is prohibited. The exception is where a user is logged in, verified as an adult and given a genuine ability to opt out. If a platform cannot meet those requirements, it cannot show gambling advertising. Large technology companies tell advertisers that they can identify what we like, what we buy, what we watch and what we might want next. They cannot suddenly become technologically helpless when parliament asks them to protect children.

There is a limitation that we do need to acknowledge. We know that an adult account does not necessarily mean that an adult is the person watching. Kids use family streaming accounts. They sit beside their parents. They use shared televisions, tablets and phones. An adult account alone cannot guarantee that a child will never see gambling advertising. We should recognise that, and we should test these reforms against what actually happens after they commence. If the protections prove inadequate, parliament should be prepared to strengthen them.

I also acknowledge that some members believe the government should adopt a complete ban on online gambling advertising. The 2003 parliamentary inquiry recommended a comprehensive prohibition phased in over three years. The government has taken a different position. Gambling remains a lawful activity for adults, but the amount, location and method of advertising will be significantly restricted.

People can disagree about precisely where that line should sit, but this bill represents substantial change. It removes gambling advertising from sporting uniforms and venues. It restricts television and radio advertising. It regulates advertising online. It stops athletes and influencers promoting wagering. It prohibits the promotion of odds and it backs those provisions with substantially stronger penalties.

The bill also strengthens action against illegal offshore gambling. Australian licensed wagering companies operate under Australian law. Illegal offshore operators do not. They can avoid Australian consumer protections and harm-minimisation requirements. This bill makes it harder for them to reach Australians and harder for Australians to pay them. Financial institutions will be required to take steps to block payments to designated illegal gambling services. The ACMA will be able to share information with financial institutions. Digital services will be required to block access to designated illegal services, and the ACMA will have stronger removal powers. If an offshore gambling company wants Australian customers but does not want Australian laws, we should make it difficult for them to find them, to access them and to pay them. The internet cannot become a jurisdiction-free casino.

The next part of the legislation strengthens BetStop. BetStop allows Australians to exclude themselves from all licensed online and telephone wagering providers through one registration. More than 63,000 registrations had been made by early June, with more than 39,000 active exclusions at that time. Those numbers tell us something extremely important: tens of thousands of Australians have actively said, 'I do not want access to this anymore.' We should respect that decision and make it effective.

The changes will strengthen BetStop so protections extend beyond email and text messages to apps, push notifications and emerging technology. Self-exclusion should mean self-exclusion, not, 'We stopped emailing you, but here's a push notification instead.' The related levy legislation will also support greater promotion of BetStop. That is important because a service cannot help someone who does not know it exists.

The bill also prohibits online Keno. The concern here is easy to understand. Traditional lotteries involve buying a ticket and waiting for a draw. Online Keno can involve rapid repeated draws, high-frequency play and high spending limits. Under some products, a person can lose as much as $1,000 every three minutes. A rapid play gambling product available every minute of every day on somebody's phone presents a very different risk from buying an occasional lottery ticket.

The legislation also bans foreign-match lotteries. These businesses effectively operate as middlemen for overseas lotteries. Australians pay an operator, somebody overseas supposedly acquires a ticket, and, if that ticket wins, the Australian relies on that chain of arrangements ultimately delivering the prize. There are obvious risks to that model. Overseas authorities have taken action against some of these arrangements, and, if something goes wrong, an Australian consumer may have limited practical ability to recover a major prize. There is also an effect here at home. Australian lotteries support newsagents, clubs and other small businesses. Charity lotteries fund community organisations. That brings me to the fake trade promotion lotteries. There is nothing wrong with genuine promotion. Buy your groceries and enter a competition; purchase a product and go into a draw. That is different from designing a business where the lottery is effectively the product, and they call it a membership scheme or trade promotion to avoid regulation. Some charge recurring membership fees. Some make it extremely difficult for customers to leave. Charity lotteries estimate that these operations diverted more than $60 million from the charitable sector in 2024. The bill closes that loophole while preserving genuine trade promotions.

There will continue to be debate about how far gambling regulation should go, and there should be. We are balancing personal freedom, business interests, sport, media, technology and public health. Some principles should be clear. Adults may choose to gamble, but children should not be recruited into gambling culture. Australians who do not want gambling advertising should have greater control over where they see it. People who choose to exclude themselves should be protected, and companies seeking Australian customers should obey Australian laws. There is also a lesson here that reaches beyond gambling. Do not confuse what you are legally entitled to do with what Australians will indefinitely accept. Do not take your customers for granted. Do not take your workers for granted. Do not take the communities that allow you to operate for granted. The gambling industry has had years to see where public opinion was heading. Too much of it continued pushing—more advertising, more integration with sport, more targeted online, more ways to reach people wherever they happen to be—and then some wondered why Australians demanded change. If an industry continually pushes right up against the boundary of what the law allows, eventually the community may decide to move that boundary, and that is what this parliament is doing.

From 1 January, families watching sport will see fewer gambling ads. Kids will not see wagering brands on their sporting heroes uniforms or around the grounds. Influencers will not be paid to push betting products to their followers, and Australians will have greater control over gambling advertising online. Illegal operators will face stronger barriers, BetStop will be strengthened, online Keno will be banned, and loopholes around foreign-match and fake lotteries will be closed.

Some will argue we should go further. That debate will continue, but the existence of an argument for going further is not an argument for doing nothing. This legislation substantially changes the relationship between gambling advertising and Australian sport. Most importantly, it gives our kids more room to simply enjoy the game. The siren should mean the game is starting and not that it is time to place a bet. I commend the bill to the House.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the really important Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 in this place today with a great deal of passion. It's clear that today is a day where reasonable minds will differ about how we should best go about changing the scourge that is gambling and its impacts on our local communities across this country. Before I go into the bill, I want to tell you, my colleagues here and those in the chamber, as well as anybody who might be watching or listening to this, a little story about why I have become so passionate about gambling or rather antigambling.

I was in my early 20s. I was a carpenter by trade. I was on a building site. It was morning smoko, and a new block layer turned up to the site. We were sitting around at smoko. For those of you who don't know, laying blocks is incredibly hard yakka. It's not laying bricks; it's laying blocks. A block probably weighs four or five times the weight of a brick. It's hard, physically demanding work. This gentleman would have been in his late 60s or early 70s—most definitely the oldest block layer I've ever seen in my working life.

At smoko, I got talking with this gentleman. I said: 'Mate, do you mind if I ask why you're here? What are you doing laying blocks at your age?' And he said: 'I'll tell you. My wife has a gambling problem, and we lost our house. We lost all our savings. I was retired, and I had to go back to work.' Here's old mate in, I estimate, his late 60s or early 70s busting his guts laying blocks. That had a profound impact on me as a young man about the scourge that is gambling in this country.

Around $36 billion is lost by Australian gamblers in this country. To put that into perspective, that's $36,000 million each and every year—not gambled, lost. We are the world's worst gamblers in every respect. To put it another way, that same $36,000 million would build six tertiary hospitals in this country each and every single year—blown, gone, never to be seen again, paid to some foreign gambling company who does not give a damn about Australians or Australian families. Madam Deputy Speaker, just think what that money could do for your communities if that money was invested in rural Indigenous health, for example—$36 billion.

I was only a young fella. I went home that night, and I hope mum won't mind me saying this. But mum had shares in a publicly listed gambling company, and I said: 'Mum, you've got to sell these shares. This is terrible. Lives are being impacted by this stuff, by these companies that just don't care.' I'm pleased to say I was successful in my advocacy. She did.

I'm not standing here today to advocate for a total ban on gambling. If adults want to gamble, I guess that's a matter for them. But what I would say to them is: 'Next time you go to have a punt—can you afford to lose this money? Are your kids well fed? Are they appropriately clothed? Are their medical needs met? What else could you be spending the money that you're about to blow on? You will blow it because the house always wins. What else could you be spending your money on?' I'm not here to tell you how to spend your money. It's a matter for you if you're an adult. But what does concern me is that this becomes a societal problem when we know without a shadow of a doubt that there are links between problem gamblers and domestic violence. Marriage breakdowns—that's when a person's individual problem becomes our collective problem; substance abuse—the list goes on.

I want to acknowledge the great work that our shadow minister, Sarah Henderson, who has put in the really hard yards. I want to acknowledge my colleague Simon Kennedy—I can't remember his seat; someone help me out.

Jo Briskey (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Cook.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. I want to acknowledge the great work the member for Cook has been doing working with our colleagues to try and see some meaningful reform here. I'm not for a second suggesting that I or anybody on my side has some sort of philosophical licence on all of this stuff. As I started out saying, this is an issue where reasonable minds differ. We have to get that balance right between protection of personal freedoms and protecting vulnerable Australians, like kids, like problem gamblers. But I, in my heart of hearts, do not believe that the government has that mix right with this bill, and I'll tell you why. Young kids, because of the explosion of gambling ads, particularly during sport, have become incapable of differentiating sport from gambling. It's all about the odds. When I was a kid growing up, on a Monday morning when you were exchanging footy cards, you were talking about your favourite player or who kicked what goal. Now kids are talking about odds. Why? Because gambling companies have preyed upon them.

The explosion of gambling ads during sport doesn't happen by some coincidence. This is a deliberate strategy to hook young Australians in to become high-risk gamblers. Now, lots of people can gamble and stop and not become a problem gambler. I'm not concerned about them. I am concerned about our kids. I am concerned about our problem gamblers. I'm concerned that, when a goal is scored, we see every LED screen light up in a stadium with the name of a gambling company. I'm concerned that wherever I see a jersey or sport shorts being worn by our sportsmen and women, you can bet your bottom dollar—pardon the pun—that there's a gambling company patch on it. It's this proliferation of gambling ads that is so problematic in this country.

I believe some sensible reforms should be in this bill. We should have a ban on sports gambling ads an hour before the game, totally during and an hour after, not this half-hearted approach of the government of five minutes before, five minutes after and still being able to see gambling ads when there's a goal or an unexpected stoppage in the game. That's crazy. What do they think—that kids are not going to watch it? And I think that should apply to live sport as well as replayed sport.

I want to see specific opt-in arrangements in this bill. If you're an adult and you want these inducements from gambling companies to gamble more, you should have to say 'I want that; please send it to me' rather than 'I don't want it', because that's what the arrangement is now. The arrangement now is that you have to opt out. I think you should have to specifically, expressly, opt in for this stuff—for these inducements that we heard so much about in the Senate inquiry last week. I think that, if you want to receive gambling ads on your streaming services, you should have to opt in. These are simple reforms—simple measures that this government could take today, with some amendments, that would protect our kids and protect our vulnerable Australians.

Who's it going to impact upon? It's going to impact upon the gambling companies, on their bottom line. Yes, there will be the sporting codes that will jump up and down. I'm a big believer that nature abhors a vacuum. When the smoking laws came in that said you couldn't have smoking advertising, everybody jumped up and down. Cricket, in particular, jumped up and down and said, 'This is terrible. This will be the death of cricket!' Nature abhors a vacuum. If the gambling companies are prevented from being able to spend their billions of dollars on gambling ads, someone else—some other organisation or some other industry—will fill it. That cannot be an argument. Surely we've learnt that from smoking. We need to adopt a public health approach to gambling. Smoking is legal; yes. Gambling is legal. But we made a decision decades ago not to allow smoking ads. What's the difference? The difference is that this is a strong, powerful, well-heeled lobby group.

We need to stand up. This is an opportunity for Australians. This is an opportunity for us, as parliamentarians. This is why we are here. If not for this, for what? This is why our people, our constituents, sent us here—to stand up for them in this place. If not now, when? If not on this, on what? This is a classic golden opportunity for this parliament to come together to work together for the benefit of Australians. Let's not squib this opportunity. Let's not take the easy road.

Yes, it's a difficult decision. Yes, there will be lobby groups and industries that will be upset about what I'm saying. But you know what? I read a recent poll which said that somewhere around 70 per cent—it may have been even higher: 70 to 80 per cent—of Australians want to see significant reform in relation to gambling. Name me another issue where you get such broadscale support in Australia for reform. It is a no-brainer. We've got political support from our people. All we need now is the political gumption to deliver on that and to deliver for the Australian people.

Claire Clutterham (Sturt, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. It was not until my mid-30s that I realised just how addictive, how harmful and how toxic online gambling could be. I'm a sports lover. I love most sports—except for those involving animals, which I cannot stand. Sports are for me, and I wish I had been good enough to play sport at a truly elite level. I was a pretty good swimmer but not really elite, and B-grade netball was the highest standard I ever achieved. I've often wondered what it would be like to play sport in front of a crowd and get paid handsomely to do it or to play sport for Australia, to represent Australia on the global stage, at a world championship, Olympic Games or Commonwealth Games, and to hear the roar of the crowd as you shoot that winning goal for the Australian Diamonds or touch the finish line ahead of the US in the 4 x 200 metre freestyle relay or slot the Sherrin between the goalposts for that after-the-siren win. That is the dream.

This love of sport led me to say yes to joining an online betting group made up of friends of friends of friends called the Gentleman's Gambling Guild, or the GGG, about 10 years ago. You didn't have to be a gentleman to join. All you had to do was pay a sum of money to enter the competition, and you had to open a Sportsbet account. Then the rules were simple. For the duration of the AFL footy season, including finals, each week you'd place a $1 bet on whatever you liked—Crows to beat Port, the Adelaide Thunderbirds to beat the Melbourne Vixens, Buddy Franklin to kick six goals. You name it, you could bet on it, but you were limited to $1. You could also place a $10 long-range bet—that is, bet on something at the start of the season in the hope it might transpire by the end of the season. My biggest failed bet was that, in 2017, I bet that Sydney Swan Isaac Heeney, still one of the best midfielders in the AFL, would win the Brownlow that year. I didn't realise he'd been diagnosed with a severe bout of glandular fever and wouldn't be playing that much, so that bet was a fail. The merciless and frankly justified ribbing I received from my fellow competitors in the GGG was very humbling, to say the least.

But, depending on how your bet went and how successful you were each week, you'd be placed on a weekly leaderboard. Multis—maybe a four-leg or a six-leg multi—would see you place higher on the leaderboard, meaning there is more incentive to place riskier and more complex bets, just in case they came off. At the end of the season, you could win prize money depending on where you were on that leaderboard. I was never any good. I was always quite confused about what the line bet actually meant, and my enduring love for the mighty Adelaide Crows during a couple of their less successful seasons meant I was never really a serious threat of winning any prize money. So being part of the GGG and placing $1 bets was just a bit of harmless fun—until it wasn't.

It became less and less fun. It was $1 a week, so I was never really in danger of suffering financially from placing these bets. I consider myself to be a reasonably smart woman, although I accept there'll be differing views on this, but I thought I'd be smart enough not to be affected by placing $1 bets. It's $1—so what? But, for me, I very quickly became obsessed with what was happening with my bet. A six-leg multi meant the entire weekend could be consumed by obsessively watching matches and checking scores, impatiently waiting for the results to see if my bet came up. A lost bet on a Friday night footy match would mean waking up in a bad mood on a Saturday or wishing failure for my competitors in the GGG leaderboard. And then I started to casually, ever so casually, top up my Sportsbet account with small amounts here and there because I was actually starting to become addicted to the thrill of the win, the smugness of knowing that you predicted the outcome of a match, the smugness of knowing your bet had paid out and that you were a sporting oracle with a higher balance in your Sportsbet account—money you'd done nothing intelligent to earn. It's easy to top up your account. You just link your savings account and press a button, and the funds magically appear, ready to be gambled away.

Eventually I stopped. I was fortunate that it dawned on me that it was actually a huge waste of my time and energy and pretty stupid to be getting angry over the failure of a $1 bet, and then the GGG eventually folded. No-one could be bothered administering it anymore, and that was that. I haven't placed a bet since. I'm not interested. I know that for me sport is way more enjoyable when I just watch it for the sheer spectacle of it. But, when I look back, I see in myself those fleeting signs of possible addiction. 'Just one more—then I'll stop.' Then you place another, but, 'This is the last bet I'm ever going to make.' But then the bet pays out, and so you place just one more, telling yourself, 'It's only 50 bucks.' Then $50 becomes $100, and it builds and goes beyond. Although you might win some, eventually, you lose more. Online gambling is addictive by design. It plays on human nature: the innate desire to win, to make money, to be in control of something, to be good at something and—particularly for me, on my multibets—to take a bit of a risk. Online gambling plays on the camaraderie that having a drink with your mates in the pub whilst watching sport can bring. It's easy—again, by design—set up an account, link your savings and away you go.

Not everyone succumbs to the addiction. Plenty of Australians have a flutter with very little consequence. But, for those who do succumb, the addiction can be devastating: irreversible financial devastation, the loss of employment, the breakdown of family relationships, increased drinking, drugs, violence, self-harm or suicide. We need to talk about addiction, to remove the stigma associated with an addiction to online gambling, so people feel comfortable reaching out for support. Addiction is a chronic health condition when someone just cannot stop doing something, even though it hurts their family, their health, their work and themselves. Addiction is real, and talking and listening—starting a gentle conversation, expressing concern without judgement and letting someone know you're there to help—can make a difference. Trying to understand addiction and offering support, not criticism, can make a big difference in someone's journey from addiction to recovery.

We know that governments also have a role to play in providing safeguards that minimise potential for harmful addiction, particularly with respect to children. The sooner the connection between sport and gambling is broken, the better. That is what this bill is aimed at. It aims at achieving this through a ban on wagering advertising content during live coverage of sporting events across all platforms, a ban on radio advertising during school drop-off and pick-up times, and limits on the frequency of advertising on television. Kids don't need to see or hear gambling advertisements. Adults don't really need to see them either—they wreck sport, they are intrusive, they are unintelligent, they feed existing addictions and they provide the foundations for new ones.

In addition, the bill includes a prohibition on displaying wagering advertising content on sporting uniforms and at sporting venues; a prohibition on the sporting heroes of our kids, along with celebrities and influencers, being used to promote wagering advertising content; and a prohibition on the broadcast of the promotion of those addictive odds. The bill also obliges all authorised deposit-taking institutions, such as banks and credit unions, and participants in a payment system to block funds transfers and payments from Australian accounts to accounts belonging to, or associated with, designated interactive gambling service operators. It obliges digital services to block access to designated interactive gambling services online. It includes prohibitions on online Keno and foreign matched lotteries. Importantly, it strengthens BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, by prohibiting licensed interactive wagering service providers from contacting individuals while they are on BetStop. The statutory review into BetStop illustrated that BetStop works. It works; we know this. It works and it is effective. We need to give it the significant publicity it deserves. We need to encourage more people, without stigma and without shame, to sign up to it. Only one in four Australians know about BetStop. This figure needs to be four in four, because it works.

This bill is not the set-and-forget one-size-fits-all solution to the harms caused by online gambling. I support this bill because it is progress. It is progress, and it builds on the previous work this government has done in relation to minimising the harms caused by online gambling. At this moment, let's not let perfection get in the way of progress, even if that progress is not considered fast enough or strong enough for some. It is still progress. Let this bill represent both the continuation of work done and the beginning of further meaningful and effective progress. I commend the bill to the House.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs) | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to begin by acknowledging the contribution of the former member for Dunkley Peta Murphy in this public debate of great importance. I don't think any of us in this place can pretend to speak for the late Peta Murphy, but I do know that, as a lady with enormous social conscience, she would be heartened to hear members in this place talking about a piece of work that she was deeply engaged in which was directly aimed at reducing the amount of harm caused by problem gambling in our nation.

I also acknowledge there's a great deal of interest across Australia and a great deal of media speculation about where this legislation will eventually land, but it's important that we remember the key principles of what we're trying to achieve in this place—that is, to try to get the balance right on an issue where there are very strongly held views across the chamber, within our individual parties and amongst the crossbench as well. There is a lot of interest, and I recognise and acknowledge the feedback I've received in my own office from people who are very passionate and who have been impacted by gambling when it's got out of control for them in their lives or the lives of their family members.

There are a few key principles that I've tried to consider in reflecting on the legislation and the need for more reform in this space. One is that we still need to respect our freedom of choice in a nation like Australia. We do need to accept a level of individual responsibility for our actions, but we also need to take every step we can reasonably take to reduce gambling harm, particularly as it impacts children or vulnerable people. The challenge for members in this place is to somehow try to get that balance right in our deliberations. People do need protection from predatory behaviour. People do need protection from illegal activities, particularly those younger Australians who are at the risk of becoming addicted by saturation of gambling promotion in our community, because the world has changed. Quite obviously, the world has changed in only a short amount of time. The amount of exposure to advertising in our own lounge rooms and on our screens has changed dramatically from what previous generations experienced, and the legislation that we're seeking to implement here is designed to try to, in some respects, catch up and minimise that harm, particularly, as I said, for younger people.

There wouldn't be a member in this place who hasn't been personally touched in some way by the issues in their own community or perhaps even in their own families when it comes to gambling addiction. It goes without saying but is probably worth repeating that, as members of parliament, we are approached by people whose lives have spiralled out of control as a direct result of their gambling addiction. We see people who have lost their businesses, who have lost relationships, who have self-harmed or who have had their lives destroyed in other ways by being lured into criminality to feed their gambling addiction. There wouldn't be a member in this place who hasn't been approached by someone in their community with that experience.

Alternatively, gambling can be harmless fun. Gambling can be a way for mates to get together, male and female, and enjoy some time with each other, having a bit of a flutter or a punt using money they can afford to lose, if they're in that position. Done responsibly, gambling can be quite an enjoyable experience for a lot of people, and literally millions of Australians do that every year. So, the members who have spoken today and will speak throughout the day will tell their personal stories. Some will be quite emotional, and we've got to try and find the balance here, as an opposition and as a government ,of where the sensible centre is and where the balance is right in terms of the right regulatory reforms in this area.

We have a cautionary tale in this country right now in relation to getting the balance right, because where we've got it wrong is in regulation and taxes around tobacco. The rules we put in place for public health reasons, as well as the regulatory structures and the taxes placed on tobacco have resulted in government effectively outsourcing the supply of tobacco to organised crime. The illicit tobacco and vaping industry in Australia today is worth more than the legal industry. That is a direct result of heavy handed regulation and government tax decisions made in this place and other places, which have resulted in governments outsourcing the tobacco industry to organised crime. In my home state of Victoria, it's resulted in more than 100 firebombings in the past couple of years, as organised crime figures compete for turf to sell their illegal product. There's the example of what I say is a cautionary tale about how we get the settings right and somehow find the sensible centre in this debate to allow people to take responsibility for their own actions but also to protect Australians from predatory behaviour.

The parliamentary inquiry chaired by the late Peta Murphy was aimed squarely at trying to achieve those outcomes. The report was titled You win some, you lose more, but it's better known as the Murphy report. It was also supported in full by the deputy chair, my friend and colleague the member for Cowper, Pat Conaghan, a man who has worked in New South Wales police, worked in the court system and now represents his community with distinction. He, through the lived experience of his former workplace, is fully aware of some of the challenges we face in terms of gambling addiction and the impact it has on our society. Between them, Peta Murphy and Pat Conaghan prepared a report which I think was a work of great substance, and I am pleased that it has remained a subject of debate in this place, though I'm not pleased that it's taken so long for some of the 31 recommendations to actually be actioned.

The focus was on online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm. The inquiry was in direct response to the growing concerns, particularly amongst young people, of the harm caused by online gambling, and it made recommendations which reflected the fact that Australians are the biggest losers in the world when it comes to gambling. Peta Murphy said herself at the release of the report:

We have a culture where sport and gambling are intrinsically linked. These behaviours are causing increasingly widespread and serious harm to individuals, families, and communities.

I agree with Peta, and I agree with the vast substance of that report.

I've previously worked in government to help introduce gambling advertising bans during live sport. That's not because I'm a wowser. I punt fairly infrequently. I may have a few bets during the Spring Racing Carnival and rapidly lose interest for the rest of the year, but I think we need to draw the distinction between sports which were primarily set up for punting—horse racing, greyhound racing, the trots. They're sports that exist because people can gamble on them. We need to draw the distinction between those and sports like the football codes, which have become saturated with gambling but were never intended to be used for that purpose. That is where the gambling industry and the sports themselves have got to take some more responsibility, because families sitting down to watch the National Rugby League game of the week or the AFL game of the week on a Friday night should not be exposed to saturation gambling advertising, and that is the fundamental issue that many of us in this place can agree on.

There is a major difference in my mind between those sports which exist for the sole purpose of gambling, like the racing codes, and the normalisation of gambling in other sporting codes like our football codes. That's why the coalition took action in 2018 and banned advertising during live sport. I respect the community's view that further action is required, and that's why we've got to this point here today with the legislation.

It's important to note that the legislation before the House today will not pass unamended. The coalition is engaged with the government in negotiations today—and, I'm sure, going forward—about some of the amendments we'd like to see put in place to strengthen the legislation before the House. The bill we're debating right now is not the legislation that will return to the chamber sometime next week after it's been through the Senate.

The Murphy report, amongst its 31 recommendations, which applied a public health lens to online gambling and reducing harm in Australia, included some significant reforms around the Australian government developing and implementing a comprehensive national strategy on online gambling harm reduction supported by a national regulation, an online gambling ombudsman, a harm-reduction levy on online-wagering service providers, a public education campaign, more independent research and improved data collection. It was, as I said at the outset, a comprehensive piece of work. Peta Murphy should be commended for that work. Pat Conaghan, in deputy chairing it, should also be commended.

For reasons that only the Prime Minister can explain, the Murphy report has not been acted on with the level of urgency that members in this place expected. I know of many Labor backbenchers who are anxious to see this legislation finally make it to the chamber, just as there are members on my side of the chamber keen to see more action. We do need stronger protections for vulnerable people. We do need to stop the predatory behaviour. More action is required to target the foreign actors who are preying on Australians. The mainstream sports, such as the football codes, have to get the message that they need to find other forms of revenue and not depend so heavily on the gambling revenue that is flowing their way. They have to reduce their own dependence on gambling for their future financial sustainability.

In closing, I want to refer again to this question of balance. We need to make sure, in this place, that we don't introduce legislation which has unintended consequences. The three fundamental principles that members on this side are seeking to apply to the legislation when it comes back in its amended form are that Australians must have choice, that adults should take a level of responsibility for their decisions and their actions and that governments have an obligation to protect vulnerable Australians, particularly children, from exploitation and harm. I don't think those three principles are contradictory. They provide what I think is a balanced framework that respects personal freedoms while recognising the need for sensible safeguards.

Those principles recognise that there are legal industries, such as horseracing, which employ thousands of Australians and which are an important part of our regional communities in particular. If we are too heavy handed in our approach to this legislation today, we will jeopardise the future of thoroughbred racing, particularly in regional communities. They're the most marginal racetracks in the country. There is nothing to be gained by undermining that sport, which actually exists for the purpose of gambling. The jobs associated with that—the trainers, the jockeys, the course staff, the catering industry, the fashion industry—are all jobs that Australians, quite rightly, want to see maintained and kept into the future. So it is important we do get the balance right in terms of Australians having choice and Australians taking responsibility for their own actions but also government fulfilling its obligation to protect vulnerable Australians, particularly children, from exploitation and harm.

Australians enjoy their sport. For many families, their weekends and their evenings are centred around local and professional sporting events. Sport should not just be an opportunity for gambling products to be marketed, particularly to young people. I think Australians understand that governments can't remove all risk from life, but they do expect us to step in when businesses or criminal figures target vulnerable Australians in order to try and make money. We do need to avoid unintended consequences, but the coalition will support reasonable measures to reduce gambling harm. We support protecting our children, we support protecting vulnerable Australians and we support evidence based reform, but we will not be supporting legislation if it weakens the existing safeguards, ignores the available evidence or creates unnecessary economic consequences.

The government has had three years to get this right. They've got another four or five days in negotiation with the coalition to fix this legislation. Unfortunately, the bill as it stands today falls short of what the community expects and won't be supported by the coalition, but we do stand ready to work with the government to support some amended legislation so it genuinely protects vulnerable Australians.

Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

It's my understanding that the member for Pearce would like to present a copy of her speech for incorporation into Hansard, in accordance with the resolution agreed to on 6 November 2025.

Tracey Roberts (Pearce, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

() (): The incorporated speech read as follows—

I would like to speak in strong support of the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. This is a significant and important piece of legislation that reflects the Albanese Labor government's commitment to reducing gambling harm, protecting vulnerable Australians and, most importantly, ensuring that children and young people can grow up without being constantly exposed to gambling promotion. Australians love their sport. It is part of who we are. Whether it is families gathering around the television to watch a weekend match, children pulling on their boots to play for their local club or supporters proudly wearing their team's colours, sport should bring people together. It should inspire participation, teamwork and community pride. What it should not do is serve as a vehicle for relentless gambling promotion.

For too long, gambling advertising has become woven into the sporting experience. It has become difficult to separate the excitement of the game from the promotion of wagering. Families watching together are exposed to repeated gambling advertisements, odds updates and marketing messages that have become so commonplace they are almost expected. The reality is that Australians have told us they have had enough. Community expectations have changed. Australians want stronger protections for children. They want to enjoy sport without gambling messages appearing at every opportunity. They want reasonable limits placed on advertising that has become inescapable across television, radio and online platforms. This bill responds directly to those concerns. It delivers a comprehensive suite of reforms designed to reduce gambling harm while recognising that governments have an important responsibility to protect the community from practices that create unnecessary risk.

One of the most significant elements of this legislation is the package of advertising reforms contained in schedule 1. The government is taking decisive action to reduce children's exposure to gambling advertising by introducing clear and enforceable restrictions. The bill bans wagering advertisements during live sporting broadcasts between 6 am and 8.30 pm. It also bans the broadcasting of sporting odds during those broadcasts. These are practical reforms that acknowledge a simple reality. Children should be able to watch their favourite sporting team without being encouraged to associate sport with gambling.

The legislation also addresses the overall volume of gambling advertising. In recent years, Australians have seen an extraordinary increase in the number of wagering advertisements on television. At times, viewers have been exposed to as many as eight gambling advertisements in a single hour. That level of saturation is simply unacceptable. Under this legislation, gambling advertising on television will be capped at no more than three advertisements each hour between 6 am and 8.30 pm. Importantly, children travelling to and from school will also be protected through restrictions on gambling advertising during school drop-off and pick-up times on radio. These measures acknowledge that reducing harm is not simply about individual advertisements. It is also about reducing the constant presence of gambling messages in everyday life.

The reforms extend beyond traditional media. Increasingly, gambling companies have shifted their focus online, using digital platforms, streaming services, podcasts, search engines and social media to reach consumers. This legislation addresses that reality. Online gambling advertising will be prohibited unless a person is logged into an account, is over the age of 18 and has the ability to opt out of receiving gambling advertising. This triple-lock approach represents a significant shift in the way gambling advertising will operate online. It means children will not be exposed to these advertisements while using online services, and adults who do not wish to receive gambling advertising will be able to opt out. Responsibility also rests with online platforms themselves. If platforms choose not to implement these safeguards, the consequence is straightforward—they will not be permitted to display gambling advertising. This is a balanced and practical approach that places community wellbeing ahead of commercial interests.

The bill also recognises that gambling companies continue to develop new methods of advertising. We have seen increasing use of athletes, celebrities and social media influencers to normalise gambling and encourage participation, particularly among younger Australians. Many young people follow sporting stars and online personalities whom they admire and trust. Those relationships should not be exploited to encourage gambling. That is why this legislation prohibits gambling companies from entering arrangements with athletes, celebrities or influencers to promote wagering products. It does not matter how many followers an influencer has or which platform they use. The principle is clear. Those with public influence should not be used to market gambling products to Australians, particularly young Australians.

Equally important are the reforms designed to break the connection between gambling and sport itself. Australians should not expect to see gambling logos displayed on sporting uniforms, around sporting grounds or throughout sporting venues. This legislation removes gambling advertising from sporting venues and bans gambling branding on players' and officials' uniforms. The reforms also extend to training sessions, press conferences and grassroots sporting events. These measures recognise that sport belongs to communities. It should not be defined by gambling promotion.

The bill also strengthens Australia's response to illegal offshore gambling operators. Illegal gambling services operate outside Australia's regulatory framework and without the consumer protections that licensed Australian providers are required to meet. The government has already blocked more than 1,700 illegal gambling websites since 2019. However, this legislation strengthens those efforts by giving regulators and financial institutions better tools to respond quickly. Banks and payment providers will be required to block transfers to illegal gambling operators. The Australian Communications and Media Authority will be able to share information with financial institutions to assist those efforts. Digital services, including search engines and app providers, will also be required to restrict access to illegal gambling services and their advertising. The legislation further enables ACMA to issue rapid take-down notices to digital platforms and influencers promoting illegal gambling services. Together, these reforms create a stronger and more effective framework for protecting Australians from illegal operators.

Another important feature of the bill is the strengthening of BetStop, Australia's national self-exclusion register. BetStop provides Australians experiencing gambling harm with the opportunity to self-exclude from licensed online and telephone wagering providers. Since its introduction in 2023, more than 65,000 Australians have registered, with more than 39,000 people currently self-excluded. Those numbers demonstrate both the importance of the service and the need for continued improvement. Technology changes rapidly. Marketing practices continue to evolve. This legislation ensures BetStop can evolve alongside them. The reforms extend marketing restrictions beyond emails and text messages to include app notifications, push notifications and emerging forms of digital communication. They also implement the recommendations arising from the statutory review of BetStop, improving clarity, usability and consumer protection. These are practical reforms that strengthen an already valuable harm reduction measure.

The legislation also takes firm action against emerging gambling products that present significant risks to consumers. One of these is online keno. Sometimes described as 'pocket pokies', online keno combines rapid play, high spending limits and continuous accessibility through mobile devices. The capacity for financial harm is significant. People can lose substantial amounts of money within minutes. The government has concluded that these products provide no meaningful community benefit and that banning online keno is an appropriate and necessary response.

The bill also addresses foreign matched lotteries. These businesses have developed operating models designed to exploit loopholes in Australia's existing laws. Rather than conducting lotteries themselves, they purchase overseas lottery tickets on behalf of Australian customers. This creates uncertainty regarding consumer protections and raises legitimate concerns about whether winnings would ultimately be honoured. Beyond those consumer risks, these businesses undermine Australian lotteries, charities and thousands of small businesses that rely on legitimate lottery sales. By closing these loopholes, the legislation protects Australian consumers while supporting local businesses and community organisations.

Similarly, the bill addresses fake trade promotion lotteries that operate under the guise of promotional competitions while using unclear payment arrangements and confusing operating models. These practices have resulted in consumers losing money and, in some cases, prizes not being delivered, because operators failed to comply with relevant licensing requirements. They also divert valuable revenue away from legitimate charity lotteries that provide significant benefits to Australian communities. This legislation makes clear that the privilege of operating lottery products in Australia comes with responsibilities. Consumers deserve transparency, fairness and confidence that, when they participate in a lottery, the rules are genuine and the protections are real.

Gambling harm affects individuals, families and entire communities. While many Australians choose to gamble responsibly, we also know that gambling harm can have devastating financial, emotional and social consequences. That is why governments have an obligation to act where appropriate to reduce those harms while protecting consumers. This legislation represents the strongest package of gambling reforms in Australia's history. It reduces children's exposure to gambling advertising. It breaks the connection between gambling and sport. It strengthens BetStop. It gives regulators stronger powers to tackle illegal operators. It protects consumers from harmful online gambling products. And it supports charities and small businesses by closing loopholes that undermine legitimate lottery operations.

Finally, I acknowledge the lasting contribution of my good friend the late Peta Murphy. Her work as chair of the parliamentary inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm highlighted the need for stronger protections and placed the experiences of affected Australians firmly at the centre of this national conversation. Her commitment to reducing gambling harm continues to influence the work of this parliament, and these reforms represent an important step in continuing that legacy.

This bill demonstrates that governments can respond to changing community expectations and take practical action to protect Australians. It recognises that families should be able to enjoy sport without being overwhelmed by gambling promotion, that children deserve better protection from harmful advertising and that Australians experiencing gambling harm deserve stronger support. I commend the bill to the House.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) | Link to this | Hansard source

There's a saying in politics, and that is that you shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. With the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026, though, I feel like it's 'Don't let the woefully inadequate be the enemy of the good.' I've got to say that I'm torn between supporting this inadequate legislation and voting it down, which is warranted, but this would result in potentially more damage and a further lack of action. This underwhelming bill puts members like me who care about the harm that gambling causes, who care about their constituents, between a rock and a hard place. It's galling to know that eventually this legislation will pass, and it's galling to know that so many in government are going to be high-fiving each other—'Look what we did. We fixed gambling harm'—when you didn't, when you won't, when you have for so long ignored the recommendations of the Murphy report. It's so galling to think of the late Peta Murphy and the tremendous work that she did in this place in such a short period of time, knowing how terribly sick she was in those last months and how she still kept coming in here, knowing her time was finite, because she thought that tabling the report was important. She thought it would make a difference.

On the one hand, we have what's known as the Murphy report. What we had was unanimous bipartisan support from the government, from the coalition and from independent members who were on that committee, which found that gambling was harming Australians, and then we continue to do so without a concerted effort to address gambling harm. The committee made 31 recommendations to reduce gambling harm, including a phase-in of a complete ban of advertising of online gambling, a minister and national regulator dedicated to reducing gambling harm and a public health priority and a banning of predatory inducements. On the other hand, what do we have? We've had pressure from the major sporting codes and broadcasters that profit and will continue to profit directly from gambling. The Australian Football League reported a net profit of $45.4 million in 2024 with a reported betting agency income of around $30 million—$30 million the AFL got from their loyal fans that turn up every day that are so induced to bet.

I think of when I was a young person and watching sport. I think of when I was a child and watching sport and then what our children have to be subjected to today—the constant bombardment of betting advertising. It just never ends. It's pernicious. I think of the National Rugby League, which earned $744.9 million in revenue in 2024, with an operating surplus of around $62 million, and which reportedly earned around $50 million of its revenue from betting agencies. The major broadcasters profit from around $239 million worth of advertising online and on metropolitan radio. State governments benefit from gambling taxes and groups like the Canberra Labor Club, whose gambling revenue from pokies benefits the Labor Party. It's really quite obscene that we have a political party in Australia that has pokie machines. It was reported there were gambling donations of more than $4 million over five years, including $1.5 million in the last election and a Labor fundraiser hosted by pokies and hospitality company Endeavour Group on the fringe of Labor's National Conference in 2026, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It's devastatingly easy to see that the Murphy report's recommendations are being sacrificed by the government on the altar of gambling, sporting and broadcasting profits. A side-by-side comparison of the government's reforms and the Murphy report's recommendations shows that the bill responds to only three of 31 recommendations—that's under 10 per cent—and only responds partially to two out of three of those.

In the absence of meaningful action, gambling harm has continued largely unabated during the more than 1,140 days since the Murphy report was handed down. The harms caused and exacerbated by gambling have continued, and they include family and relationship breakdown, unemployment, poverty, crime, family and domestic violence, elder abuse—one in six older Australians experience elder abuse, and a significant proportion of that is because their children and their grandchildren are seeking money from grandma and grandpa to try and cover debts from gambling—and gambling related suicide.

Gambling losses in Australia are now estimated to be $36 billion every year, more than $95 million every single day. That's according to the Australia Institute. Thirty-six billion dollars equates to more than $1,290 in losses for every man, woman and child in Australia. It's one way that we lead across the world: we have the highest rate of gambling losses on a per capita basis in the world.

I—and no doubt many other members in this place—have heard from many of those impacted. My constituents and Australians from across the nation have been begging for meaningful gambling reform, in particular further restrictions on gambling advertising and inducements. While strengthening BetStop was helpful—at every opportunity, when the government are asked about a question around the Murphy report or gambling harm, they talk about it—that's a voluntary service, which those suffering the most gambling harm may not be able to engage with for a variety of reasons.

The reforms proposed in this bill are piecemeal at best and based on industry preferences rather than respectable research and what we really should be doing in this place. If we're all here to make a better Australia, we're failing today. I've never been more reluctant when deciding how to vote on a bill. Without some of the lodged amendments being passed, this bill can only be seen as a missed opportunity to implement the vision of the late, brave former member for Dunkley, Peta Murphy, and the committee report from the inquiry that she chaired with fellow members, many of whom are still in this place, that was handed down well over a thousand days ago. Vale, Peta Murphy, and vale, your excellent work, barely 10 per cent of which is being implemented by government, a government that she so loyally served.

What's particularly galling is knowing that we're not going to address gambling reform again in this place, certainly not in this parliament and probably not in the next or the one after, because there'll be a big tick next to gambling reform that that's being fixed. We have a duty in this place—we have a duty to our children; we have a duty to children who have not been born; we have a duty to vulnerable Australians; we have a duty to current and future Australia—and today, very sadly, we've squibbed it. I just hope that the government consider the needs of vulnerable Australians—in fact, all Australians—over codes, over news channels and over their own self-interests in taking gambling donations and actually truly address and bring to this parliament legislation that addresses all 31 recommendations.

Sarah Witty (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. I want to begin with a story from a father in Melbourne who contacted my office. He told me about his 12-year-old son, a basketball fanatic, a kid who loves sport. Like many families, they spend time together watching games, following players and talking about results. His family has also experienced the devastating impact of gambling addiction. What worried him was not what was happening on the court. What worried him was what was happening in the advertising breaks. He described game after game where gambling advertising appeared again and again, so often that they became part of the experience of watching sport itself. One part of his story in particular has stayed with me. His son saw an advertisement connected to sports statistics and said he would like to use it because he enjoyed analysing teams and players. The father could see how easily a love of sport could be turned into something else.

Another parent contacted me with a similar concern. He has two young boys who love footy and cricket. He told me they had started asking questions about getting betting odds and gambling markets, not because they were looking for gambling content but because gambling content kept finding them. He spoke about what felt like a constant stream of gambling promotions attached to the sports his children loved. Most of all, he spoke as a parent. He spoke about feeling powerless to stop it. Parents should not have to carry that burden on their own. Children should be able to enjoy sport as children. They should be able to follow their favourite players, support their team and celebrate a win without being drawn into a conversation about gambling.

Those conversations with Melbourne families have stayed with me, and they are why the Albanese Labor government is acting. This government is taking steps to reduce children's exposure to gambling advertising, break the connection between sport and wagering, and help ensure families can enjoy sport without gambling companies competing for their attention.

One of the first stakeholder events I attended in Parliament House focused on gambling harm and gambling advertising. I was new to this place and a little bit unsure about what went on. I went into a committee room to see some people up on the screen. The people on the screen then shared their stories. One was a young man who was addicted to gambling and had lots of different gambling companies giving him free bets and free things to induce him to keep gambling. But what really stood out to me were the two young women who were there. They looked quite distressed. When they started to speak, I really began to understand why. They told of their brother—one of the sisters told of their brother; the other was just holding her—who had a gambling addiction that got out of hand and, eventually, he killed himself. You could see the pain on the face of the two sisters as they described their brother. This was something that I never even thought about until hearing those stories.

When we debate legislation in this place, it is easy to focus on clauses, schedules and technical provisions. Behind every reform are real people: people trying to rebuild their lives; parents trying to protect their children; families dealing with financial pressure, mental health challenges, relationship breakdowns and the stress that gambling harm can cause. That reality is reflected in my own community. Across the city of Melbourne, Yarra and Stonnington, more than $150 million was lost on pokie machines alone in the last financial year. That is a staggering amount of money—money that could have gone towards rent, money that could have gone towards groceries, money that could have gone towards school costs, savings or everyday household expenses. Every dollar lost tells part of the story. The greater story is the impact that gambling harm has on families and communities.

In Melbourne, we are fortunate to have organisations such as Turning Point working every day to reduce gambling harm in our community. Turning Point provides treatment and counselling services, supports people and families affected by gambling harm, conducts leading research and helps build the evidence that informs better public policy. I've met with their team and heard firsthand about the experiences of people seeking support and trying to regain financial stability, repair relationships and rebuild confidence in their lives. Their continued work in my community shows how gambling harm rarely affects just one person; it affects partners, children, parents and entire families. The people working on the front line see those impacts every day. They also see the difference that prevention, education, early intervention and support can make. Their experience reinforces why measures that reduce exposure to gambling advertising, particularly for children and young people, are so important.

For too many Australians, gambling advertising has become deeply embedded in the way sport is consumed. As representatives of our community, we hear the growing concern about the sheer volume of gambling advertising appearing across television, streaming services, social media platforms, podcasts, online services and radio broadcasts. Many Australians have felt there is simply no escape from it. The parents who contacted my office were asking for their children to be able to enjoy sport without constant exposure to gambling promotions. They were asking for some balance to be restored, and that is what this legislation will do.

The Albanese Labor government's reforms are built around a simple principle: Australians should have more control over where and how they are exposed to gambling advertising. Children should not be the audience of gambling companies, sport should not be a pathway into gambling and families should be able to enjoy time together without being overwhelmed by gambling promotions. The reforms in the main bill take practical action to achieve that. From 1 January next year, Australians will be able to sit down and watch live sport without the level of gambling advertising that has become normalised over recent years. The main bill bans gambling advertising during live sport broadcasts on television between 6 am and 8.30 pm. Outside live sports, a cap will apply so that no more than three gambling advertisements can be shown per hour during that time.

The main bill also tackles advertising where many children and young people increasingly spend their time online across digital platforms, social media and news websites. These reforms reduce the reach of gambling advertising across the online environment while giving Australians greater control over what they are exposed to.

The legislation also bans gambling promotions by celebrities, athletes and influencers. That is an important change. Supporting heroes and online personalities have significant influence, particularly with young Australians. That influence should not be used to encourage gambling activity. The main bill ends that practice.

The legislation also removes gambling advertising from sporting environments themselves. Stadium advertising will be banned. Jersey advertising will be banned. These reforms help restore a clear separation between sport and wagering. When children pull on a sporting jumper, the focus should be on the team they support. When families attend a game, the focus should be on the players on the field. The focus should be on the sport itself.

The bill also bans gambling advertising on radio during school drop-off and pick-up times. That is another practical reform aimed at reducing children's exposure to gambling promotions during key parts of the day. At every step, the goal is straightforward: reduce exposure; reduce saturation; reduce harm.

The bill also contains important reforms beyond advertising. One of those reforms strengthens BetStop, Australia's National Self-Exclusion Register. Since its launch, thousands of Australians have used BetStop as part of their recovery from gambling. This legislation strengthens those protections. It improves the operations of the register. It reduces opportunities for unwanted marketing. It helps ensure that Australians who have made the decision to exclude themselves from gambling receive stronger support.

The bill also strengthens efforts to combat illegal offshore gambling operators. Those operators sit outside Australia's regulatory framework and consumer protections. The reforms provide stronger tools to disrupt their activities and reduce the harm they can cause.

The legislation also addresses emerging gambling products that present significant risks. One example is online keno. These products can operate at an extraordinary speed and carry a significant capacity for harm. The government will ban online keno through these reforms.

The bill also addresses foreign matched lotteries. These schemes rely on loopholes that allow providers to act as the intermediaries of overseas lottery purchases. Closing those loopholes will strengthen consumer protections and help protect legitimate Australian lottery operators, including organisations that support community activity and charity work.

The legislation also cracks down on fake trade promotion lotteries. These operators have been able to exploit regulatory gaps while operating outside the standard expected of licensed lottery providers. Charities have raised serious concerns about the impact these arrangements are having on legitimate fundraising activities. This bill closes those loopholes and strengthens protections for consumers and community organisations.

Real progress on gambling harm comes from many people working together. It comes from families having difficult conversations around kitchen tables. It comes from community organisations supporting people through recovery. It comes from advocates sharing their lived experience. It comes from governments being prepared to act. This legislation is an important part of that broader effort. It sits alongside the work being done every day by health professionals, community organisations, sporting bodies, families and people with lived experience of gambling harm. Together, those efforts are helping build a culture where support is easier to find, protection is stronger and children are not exposed to the same level of gambling promotion as has become normalised over recent years.

As I prepared for this debate, I kept thinking about those parents who contacted my office; I thought about the father watching basketball with his son; I thought about the parent who told me that their young boy was already asking questions about odds while trying to watch footy and cricket. They wanted their children to enjoy sport as children. They wanted to sit down together as a family and watch a game without a constant stream of gambling promotions competing for their attention. They wanted to know that someone was listening.

Today, I want them to know that their voices have been heard. The reforms before the House take practical action to reduce children's exposure to gambling advertising. They take practical action to break the connection between sport and wagering. They take practical action to give families greater confidence that the moments they share around sport are about the game itself.

The stories that shaped my contribution to this debate did not come from boardrooms; they came from lounge rooms and kitchen tables, from parents doing their best to raise healthy, happy and confident young people. Those are the voices I carry with me from Melbourne, and those are the families I am thinking about as I support this legislation. I commend the bill to the House.

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

I've spent a lot of time in this building talking about gambling reform. The Murphy review was the first inquiry that I participated in, and the personal stories were heartbreaking. I was really impressed by the committee process: the government identifying an issue that needed action; all sides working together, genuinely interested in understanding the issue and what needs to be done. I contributed significantly to that inquiry, suggesting 45 recommendations that I thought should be addressed based on the evidence we heard, with 42 of them ending up in the final report.

Now, in the more than three years since that piece of multipartisan work was tabled in this House with unanimous recommendations, I've continued to fight to keep this issue on the agenda and to hold the Prime Minister to account for his inaction and intransigence. I've asked him questions nine times in question time. I've raised gambling on the floor of this House 250 times since I was elected. Then, like a slap in the face, the government issued its long-overdue response, merely noting the 31 recommendations and going on to talk about small actions that were not identified as priorities in that report.

The package that has been put forward is not fit for purpose. It will not address this problem. It's designed to give the government a handful of talking points. It's about politics; it's not about lives. After four years of advocacy, I want to spend this time addressing three issues: firstly, why this reform is important for Australians; secondly, why the package being presented is woefully inadequate; and thirdly, why this reform is actually important for the government too.

Firstly, why is it important for Australians? Well, we have the statistics. We lose $31 billion a year, the most in the world, twice as much as Americans and New Zealanders. On average, Australian households lose more through gambling than they spend on electricity, gas and other fuels. Half a million Australians have felt the need to ask their own banks to block them from gambling. Harm from an individual's gambling doesn't stop with that person. On average, six other people are directly affected when someone gambles at the highest risk level through the breakdown of relationships, financial and mental distress, and emotional and psychological impacts.

We are normalising gambling for children. It's illegal for anyone under 18 to gamble in Australia but it's not stopping them. It's not illegal to market gambling to them and there are few restrictions preventing it. More 12 to 17-year-olds gamble than play soccer, basketball, netball, AFL, cricket or rugby. This is our blind spot. This is like guns in the United States.

Now, this reform is not, as the Prime Minister has suggested, about stopping someone from having a punt on a Saturday; this is about protecting Australians, particularly our kids, from gambling harms. So they are the statistics. And then there are the stories. Since 2022, I have been contacted by more than 400 constituents in relation to excessive gambling advertising. I have heard heartbreaking stories from parents, family members, partners and former gambling addicts. I've really struggled to choose which stories to tell the House today about the scourge of addiction and the normalisation of gambling as part of sport because of the ever-present ads. There were so many stories and they all have weight.

I've heard from a woman whose nephew committed suicide in the face of gambling debts, and whose son is now struggling with a gambling addiction. He is trying so hard to get away from it, but she knows how hard he finds it when he's bombarded with ads everywhere he looks. I've heard from a year-12 student whose teacher puts the class's weekend gambling wins and losses up on the whiteboard in their maths class. I've heard from a woman who's worked in the advertising industry on gambling ads and has seen how the algorithms are designed to maximise losses. Everyone who speaks to me about gambling shares a common message: stop the ads.

I want to quote two people who have been willing to tell their stories. The first says:

Just over two years ago my son lost everything, including his wife and kids, all due to easy online gambling. He also tried to take his own life. When I see these gambling ads constantly on TV, I literally either change the channel or close my eyes and block my ears. My son loves his football, so he constantly sees these ads thrown in his face as well.

The second said:

Over a period of 25-odd years I gambled away my family, a multitude of friends & other relationships, & my home, before I realised what I'd really done & what I was still doing. Then, I nearly gambled away a second family before a close friend (with different addictions) helped me to realise that I was addicted to this 'pasttime'. Now, seeing the gambling adds shoved in my 12yo daughter's face every time we want to enjoy time watching our favourite teams playing, I nearly cry thinking how close I came to losing her, but I don't; instead we have discussions about how I (& many of my friends) fell for the marketing.

Now I want to talk about what's wrong with this package. The main issue here is the wagering advertising. The stated objectives, from the government, of the wagering advertising measures are, firstly, to break the connection between wagering and sport; secondly, to minimise the exposure of children and other vulnerable people to wagering advertising; and, thirdly, to reduce its saturation across the internet, radio and television. I want to go through these three objectives and explain why they will not be achieved by this package.

The bottom line is that partial bans don't work. We heard this in the inquiry. The 2018 ad restrictions resulted in a 131 per cent increase in ads after 8.30 pm. They just move the ads around. The ads work, so gambling companies will be incredibly creative in finding any loopholes. They've done it before and they will do it again. A phase-out of these ads is the only thing that makes sense. The government's own impact assessment was damning. It showed that a full ban would not only be more effective; it would also be easier to implement and cheaper for taxpayers. All the tinkering around the edges in negotiated amendments between the government and the coalition will make no difference. We need to phase out the ads.

Looking at those three stated objectives: firstly, will this package break the connection between wagering and sport? No, it will not. Currently there are restrictions about showing gambling ads during live sport online, but they're are so ineffective that no-one really talks about them. Under this package, on any streaming platform, there will actually be more ads allowed during scheduled and unscheduled breaks in sport, as long as there's an opt-out option—buried there, somewhere—on each separate platform. How can allowing more gambling ads during sports broadcast online, which is increasingly how people watch sport, be presented as breaking the connection between wagering and sport?

This package does nothing about establishing a national regulator. Gambling companies will continue to find loopholes. They'll seek the lowest-common-denominator regulation in the Northern Territory and find new ways to build that connection between gambling and sport.

The second question is: will it minimise the exposure of children and vulnerable people to wagering advertising? No. It allows three ads every hour, throughout the day, on TV. So, if you sit down with the family to watch LEGO Masters or MasterChef, you'll see a gambling ad every 20 minutes. After 8.30 pm, ads are unlimited, yet 83 per cent of children aged 11 to 16 continue watching sport after 8.30 pm.

The most vulnerable cohort of people we should be protecting here is people who are struggling with a gambling addiction. This bill ignores the Murphy recommendation to ban inducements—or 'generosities', as the gambling companies chillingly call them. So the companies will keep bombarding vulnerable people with offers of free money. Quibbling about VIP flights and accommodation, as we've heard some of these amendments might do, is such a pathetic attempt to reduce inducements that it must have come from the gambling companies themselves.

The third question is: will it reduce saturation across the internet, radio and TV? No. The internet is providing an opt-out model. The only evidence we have is that 0.12 per cent of SBS subscribers have found, and used, the opt-out option. That's about one in every 800 subscribers. That will not reduce saturation. The government knew that statistic when it decided that this was the solution. It is completely dishonest, or at least disingenuous, to call this a 'triple lock', or to say that this will protect people, knowing that the best evidence that we have shows that a fraction of one per cent of people will find and use that option. At the very least it should be opt-in, so that the default option is no ads unless you specifically want them. Then we have TV. No—there are still three ads an hour now. It must be pretty bad, now, if an ad every 20 minutes throughout the day is seen as a step forward. And, after the magical time of 8.30 pm, the ads are unlimited. There is absolutely no evidence to support this piece of policy. The government was grilled on this in the Senate inquiry, and, in the very brief community consultation, the committee was told this was a political decision, not evidence based.

Why is this reform package important for the government? Well, the government has decided that this is not an issue that people are willing to change their vote over; people might not like the ads, but there are other things that matter more when it comes to voting. What they're missing is that this is the perfect case study for what people hate about today's politics. Trust in politicians is appallingly low. Surveys show that more than half of all Australians believe that government is run for a few big interests. We're facing so many intractable problems: productivity; the cost of living; climate action; energy security. Here is an issue with an easy answer: ban the ads—prioritise the public over the vested interests.

But the government is listening to the power and the money, not the people. The gambling companies make significant political donations to both major parties. The gambling industry lobbyists are everywhere in parliament: at Aussie's Cafe, playing basketball with MPs in the mornings, turning up at events, sponsoring the Australian Parliament Sports Club and walking the halls. It's disgusting. The sports codes are also deeply implicated. The AFL and the NRL make about $50 million each from the gambling industry, through multiple revenue streams, and no government wants to be seen to be anti sport. The media companies—the ones that hardly ever cover this story—don't want to lose the gambling revenue. And the government isn't willing to take them on, because they write the stories about the government.

Without some serious improvements to this bill, this will confirm everything that the Australian public fears about how decisions are actually made. Even if polling shows that this isn't the No. 1 voting issue, it becomes an example of why the system is broken. People are turning away from the major parties because they want someone who will actually stand up for them.

I am so disappointed with this. I felt so optimistic, being part of the inquiry. I heard heartbreaking stories in that inquiry, and in my electorate, and I felt, 'Here is a problem that we can actually fix.' I've now seen the way lobbyists work, and I've seen who the government is listening to, and it leaves me feeling disgusted.

I move my second reading amendment to this bill:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, in its unanimous report You Win Some, You Lose More, recommended a comprehensive phase out of online gambling advertising, the establishment of a national gambling regulator and a ban on inducements and inducement advertising; and

(b) the Government has failed to deliver on these recommendations, and in doing so has chosen to favour the interests of gambling companies over the wellbeing of the Australian community; and

(2) calls on the Government to implement a comprehensive phase-out of online gambling advertising, ban inducements to gamble, and establish a national regulator".

That amendment is to hold true to the recommendations of the Murphy report and go ahead with a full phase-out of all gambling ads and a ban on inducements, and to establish a national regulator. If the government had acted immediately after receiving the Murphy report, that phase-out of gambling ads would be done by now.

I cannot support this bill in its current form because it is an insult to everyone who has bravely told their story to me, to the committee inquiry and to all the other people who sit in this House and in the other place. I cannot support the bill in its current form because it is an insult to the memory of the late Peta Murphy, the chair of that inquiry, who cared so much about this issue and oversaw a unanimous report—supported by all sides of politics—for stronger reforms, before she passed away. I cannot support the bill in its current form because it lets the government off the hook and confirms our worst fears about how the government makes decisions. The bill ignores the vast majority of the recommendations in the Murphy inquiry. It has no national regulator, no phase-out of gambling ads and no end to inducements. Its complexity is a joke.

Every member of this House should be thinking very carefully about how they vote on this bill, no matter their party's policy on voting discipline. We have all been sent here to represent our communities, not to represent vested interests and put our political party first. This decision needs to be about what is right for the Australian people, not what is right for the money and the power. Each vote on this bill is each member's opportunity to make that choice.

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

Is the amendment seconded?

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Madonna Jarrett (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Having a punt is a normal part of a weekend for many, and for many gambling can be enjoyed responsibly. But gambling can become a highly destructive addiction without the right safeguards and support measures in place. That's why Labor is advancing one of the most important public health and consumer protection reforms of our time and one of the most significant undertaken by this government: gambling reform.

Many of my constituents in Brisbane have reached out to me advocating for strong action on gambling. I've met many families and individuals whose relationships, finances and futures have been ripped apart by gambling addiction. Gambling can affect self-esteem, relationships, physical and mental health, work performance and social life. Gambling is everywhere you go. If you go to your local pub on a weekend, watch your kids play sport, watch your favourite sports or teams play on the TV, you see gambling. This legislation is not simply about gambling though; it's about protecting families, protecting children, protecting vulnerable Australians and ensuring that corporate profits don't come before the wellbeing of our communities.

As Australians, we really do love our sport. We love our AFL, our NRL, cricket, rugby, horse racing and countless local sporting clubs. But somewhere over the past couple of decades, something has changed. Sports became saturated with gambling. Children can barely watch a football match without being exposed to betting odds before kick-off, gambling advertisements during the break and commentators discussing markets as though betting was simply another part of the game. Labor recognises that this normalisation has gone too far. The Albanese government has responded with the strongest national gambling reforms Australia has ever seen, introducing the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026, along with the National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026, to dramatically reduce the exposure of Australians, particularly children, to gambling advertising while strengthening protections for those experiencing gambling. We need this balance. We need both sides. They acknowledge that gambling is a legal activity enjoyed responsibly by many adults while recognising that governments do have an obligation to minimise harm, in exactly the same way we regulate alcohol, tobacco and financial services.

One of the centrepieces of Labor's reforms is restricting gambling advertising. For years Australians have complained that gambling advertisements have become impossible to avoid. We have heard that this morning in this House again. Schedule 1 introduces a comprehensive package of reforms designed to reduce the prevalence of gambling advertising and better protect children and families from exposure to wagering promotions. The measures include legislating a ban on wagering advertising during the live broadcasts of sporting events between the hours of 6 am and 8.30 pm, as well as prohibiting the broadcast of betting odds during these times.

It's clear there is community concern about the volume of gambling advertising on television. In 2024, viewers could be exposed to as many as eight gambling ads within a single hour of programming. To address this, the government, through these bills, will introduce a cap of three gambling ads per hour between 6 am and 8.30 pm, ensuring that Australians are no longer inundated with wagering promotion. The reforms will also protect children during the daily commute by prohibiting gambling advertising on radio during school travel times. In addition, all gambling advertisements that are permitted to be broadcast will be subject to stricter requirements with harmful or misleading advertising practices prohibited.

Children should grow up admiring athletes not betting companies. Parents should be able to watch football with their kids without gambling advertisements appearing every few minutes, and sports should be about teamwork, should be about competition, should be about community, not encouraging people to place another bet. The government is committed to addressing the growing connection between Australia's love of sport and the increasing promotion of gambling. Today's gambling advertising is deeply embedded throughout the sport experience. Gambling logos appear on player uniforms and are at game venues, while gambling promotions are—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Madonna Jarrett (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, they are. They're predominantly displayed at sporting venues and broadcasts. Australians are passionate about sport. That's a great thing. However, we really do not want to be constantly exposed to gambling advertising while we're watching our kids or participating in the games that we love.

This legislation will change that. The bill introduces rules that gambling advertising cannot be shown during live play, regardless of the time of day. It also makes Australian sports a gambling-advertising-free environment by prohibiting gambling promotions on sporting uniforms and at sporting venues. These restrictions will extend to training sessions, press conferences and amateur and grassroots sporting events. By taking these steps, we will help restore sport as a space focused on community, on competition, on team building and on self-esteem rather than gambling promotion.

The government is also introducing a ban on online gambling. Digital platforms have become one of the fastest-growing sources of gambling advertising. This prohibition will rightly apply across digital platforms, including social media services, news websites, streaming services, podcasts, music-streaming platforms, video-sharing platforms and search engines. There will be a limited exception, which will apply where a user is logged onto an account, is verified as being over 18 years of age and is provided with a clear option to opt out of receiving gambling advertising. It's a triple-lock approach that is designed to ensure that children are not exposed to gambling advertising online. It will also empower adults who do not wish to see gambling advertising online, whether they're streaming content, using social media, browsing the internet or conducting online searches, to opt out of receiving such advertisements. Just last week, every time I turned on my phone first thing in the morning and went to watch a news broadcast, I was hit with a gambling ad from an online platform.

Online platforms will be responsible for implementing and enforcing these requirements. Where platforms do not comply with these obligations, they will not be permitted to display gambling advertising to any user at any time. This recognises a simple reality: children today—and adults today!—spend enormous amounts of time online. If we are serious about protecting young Australians and older Australians, gambling reform cannot stop at the television. It has to include the digital world as well.

Through the reforms, Labor is also strengthening BetStop the National Self-Exclusion Register. People suffering from gambling often reach a point where they genuinely need help. The challenge is that addiction makes it difficult to stop. BetStop gives Australians a practical way to exclude themselves from licensed wagering providers. Labor's reforms strengthen this system, making it more effective and more responsive for people seeking support.

Many people in my community of Brisbane have highlighted the devastating impact that problem gambling, particularly through poker machines, can have on individuals, families and communities. The government is deeply concerned about the prospect of these harms extending beyond traditional venues and into people's homes and onto their mobile phones. This is why this bill also bans online keno, the so-called pocket pokies. They combine rapid-draw formats, continuous play and high spending limits, creating an environment that can facilitate significant gambling harm. In some cases, individuals have lost up to $1,000 in just three minutes. Given the risks involved in the absence of any broader community benefit, the government really is unapologetic about taking strong action to prevent these products from operating online.

Importantly, Labor understands that regulation alone isn't enough. The government is investing in financial counselling services specifically designed for Australians experiencing gambling related hardship—the flip side of the coin. Families dealing with gambling addiction often experience debt, relationship breakdown, housing insecurity and severe mental health challenges. Providing practical financial support alongside regulatory reform demonstrates Labor's broader philosophy that governments should not simply punish the problem but help people overcome them.

The government is also investing in a public awareness campaign to help with this. Education does matter. Australians deserve to understand the risks associated with online gambling, particularly young adults who've never experienced a world without betting advertisements. Public education has transformed attitudes. I remember way back in the day it was about seatbelts in cars. We've had smoking, drink driving and skin cancer. There is every reason to believe that similar awareness campaigns can reduce gambling harm over time.

Labor is also cracking down on illegal offshore gambling. These companies often operate outside Australian law, providing little consumer protection and avoiding paying Australian taxes. Removing illegal operators helps protect consumers while supporting the integrity of Australia's regulated wagering industry. Through this bill, the government is trying to strike a balance between consumer protection, sporting organisations, broadcasters, employers, employment and personal freedom. Labor has chosen evidence over ideology here, and the reforms, as we've heard earlier today, have been informed by years of parliamentary inquiries.

We should also recognise the broader Labor philosophy behind these reforms. Labor believe markets are powerful. Businesses create jobs. Competition drives innovation, but markets also require rules. When industries profit from products capable of causing addiction and harm, governments do have a responsibility to step in and ensure safeguards exist. As I said earlier, principles like this apply to pharmaceuticals, alcohol, tobacco and increasingly gambling. It's not antibusiness. It's responsible government. Sectors like banking, the aviation industry, food safety et cetera have all operated under significant regulation because Australians expect safety and integrity.

While this bill is introducing significant reforms, we have all seen last week's Senate inquiry, which showed us the most toxic version of inducements. Our government condemns those alleged actions in the strongest form. I also want to thank the people of Brisbane who reached out to me about this and the need for gambling reforms to go further. The government is listening to you and will work with those opposite to strengthen protections. This will be flagged in amendments to this bill. We will continue negotiating in good faith, and I really do call on all members in this place to work with us to get this bill passed for the betterment of our nation.

One particularly important aspect of these reforms is breaking the link between gambling and sport. Many young Australians today struggle to imagine professional sport without betting sponsorship. That should concern all of us. Sports really should inspire participation, teamwork, healthy competition and not encourage financial risk-taking before kids are even old enough to understand probability and the harm it can cause. Reducing that constant association is an investment in future generations.

These reforms also send an important cultural message. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it should be aggressively marketed everywhere. Australians increasingly recognise this distinction. We regulate alcohol advertising, we regulate tobacco, and we regulate prescription medicines. Reasonable limits on gambling advertising simply recognise the potential harms associated with excessive gambling. What Labor is changing is the relentless marketing that has normalised betting across almost every sporting event and media platform. It's an important distinction, and it's about informed choice, not prohibition. Ultimately, governments are judged not only by the economic statistics but by the wellbeing of the people they serve—a government that protects children, a government that supports families, a government that helps those experiencing addiction, a government willing to stand up to powerful industries where necessary. Those are Labor values, and the Albanese government's gambling reforms reflect a belief that economic success and social responsibility should go hand in hand. They recognise that freedom must be accompanied by responsibility, that prosperity should benefit communities and that vulnerable people deserve protection.

As implementation continues, there will undoubtedly be further discussion, improvements and refinements to this legislation. What matters is that Australia is finally moving in the right direction. After years of community concern, Labor is doing something about it. Labor is acting. These reforms present meaningful progress towards reducing gambling harm, protecting children from relentless advertising, strengthening support services and ensuring Australia's gambling industry operates with greater responsibility and accountability. We need to continue to work together to get these reforms right.

Nicolette Boele (Bradfield, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

We know the statistics, and they're frightening. Australia has less than one per cent of the world's population but 18 per cent of its poker machines. We gamble the highest amount per capita globally, and we lose more money per person to gambling than any other country on Earth. How much money? Well, together, Australians have lost over $107 billion to gambling since July 2023, which is when the Murphy review, the landmark government report into gambling harm prevention, was tabled—$107 billion. That's $35 billion lost a year. Now, $35 billion a year is more than the government spends on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, more than it spends on childcare subsidy and more than it spends educating our children in schools.

What are the consequences of all of these losses? As many as 20 per cent of the suicides in Australia are caused by gambling harm. About one in seven Australian adults experience gambling related harms every year—that's more than three million Australians—and 18- to 24-year-old gamblers are nearly twice as likely to experience harm. These facts and figures are high level and they could be abstract, but they speak to the thousands and thousands of individual stories. We've all heard these stories; they're everywhere. Most of us have people in our families or our social circles who are struggling with gambling.

Here's what I've heard from some people in my electorate, from constituents, over the past year: a father who describes being constantly and incessantly bombarded with online gambling advertisements while watching sport, whether online or on TV—he describes this as 'bordering on harassment' and feels that his children are being targeted; a constituent who calls gambling 'Australia's gun problem'; an older constituent who grew up in a family unable to buy food because of the father's addiction to betting on horses, and who sees gambling today as even more pervasive; a teenager who, because of the ban on social media for under 16s, now watches more TV and sees even more gambling advertising than ever before; a parent who describes intense and repeated exposure to gambling promotions while watching cricket with their kids, and the fear that this normalises gambling for very young children; and a constituent who describes watching young men at an AFL match paying more attention to their online gambling than to the game being played right there before their eyes. I could go on, but it's almost too painful to do so.

These stories do not reflect individual weaknesses; they are the result of a predatory industry taking advantage of weak regulation over a highly addictive product. They are the result of systemic issues which this bill claims to fix. The government says that these laws are an attempt to break the connection between wagering and sport, and to minimise the exposure of vulnerable people to gambling advertising. The Prime Minister himself says that kids should grow up thinking that gambling and sport are different things, that they're not the same thing—and he's right. But he's wrong when he claims that this bill will achieve that admirable goal. How do I know this? Because over 1,000 days ago, his former colleague the late Peta Murphy handed down a report called You win some, you lose more. That laid out, in comprehensive detail, all the things that the government should be doing to break that connection between wagering and sport. This bill falls far, far short of those recommendations.

What does the bill do? On advertising, it makes some changes. It bans TV ads during live sport between 6 am and 8.30 pm. Outside sport, it caps ads to three hours per day. It bans athlete, celebrity or influencer promotion of gambling, and it bans ads in stadiums and on jerseys. These are welcomed steps forward, but they're small steps. They're too small, because gambling ads continue around these limited restrictions. A partial ban does little to address them. The Murphy report clearly found that partial bans just don't work. Let me read out exactly what was said in that report:

A phased, comprehensive ban on all gambling advertising on all media—broadcast and online, that leaves no room for circumvention …

Well, these new laws leave plenty of room for circumvention—three hours per day, every 20 minutes. That's still a lot of ads, and there are more gaps. Advertisers will find ways around partial TV bans and aggressively market their products on social media, for instance. That's what tobacco companies did, and gambling companies will simply repeat that playbook. Then there are, of course, streaming platforms, where most Australians now watch their sport.

This new bill will require platforms to have an opt-out function to allow people to self-select out of gambling ads. But that's not good enough. It's not good enough for governments to defer responsibility to families and children, to make them do the work of avoiding gambling ads and harm. We know that the opt-out model only works if people know it exists, if they know how to change their settings and if they're motivated to change them.

I want to tell the House about organ donations. The top deceased-donor countries in the world for organ donations per million in population are Spain, the United States, Portugal, Belgium and Croatia. What do all these countries have in common? A presumed consent to donate. For these countries, donation rates are as high as 50 per cent. By contrast, here in Australia, where people need to change their default settings from 'no, I'm not an organ donor' to 'yes, I want to be an organ donor', that rate is just 20 per cent. One example closer to home is that, when the SBS introduced an opt-out feature for gambling advertising on its streaming services, it was reported that only 0.2 per cent of active subscribers used that option over almost two years.

We see this across a very broad range of public policy areas. People very rarely change their default settings, and, as gambling-harm prevention expert Professor Samantha Thomas wrote in her submission to the Senate inquiry, 'young people and parents should not be expected to navigate sophisticated commercial marketing systems to continuously identify and block novel gambling promotions'. The government's own impact analysis assessed that a full advertising ban would deliver twice greater net public benefit than a partial ban and at half the administrative cost. Our kids just really shouldn't be forced to endure the flood of ads. This bill does reduce that flood or that flow a little bit, but it's still not enough. Ads teach kids that the only way to enjoy sport is to throw money at it, but gambling is not a normal part of sport.

Professor Thomas poses an excellent question: if gambling promotions are deemed harmful enough to be removed from stadiums and players uniforms, then why are they still acceptable across other forms of media that children consume daily? These inconsistencies, to me, don't make sense, and that's because I think they simply aren't about logic and rationality. They're about caving to corporate pressure over and above the public interest—free tickets to AFL and NRL games, to the Australian Open and to the Melbourne Cup, and direct access to politicians through the parliamentary sports club. That corporate pressure was enough to ensure that the other key recommendations of the Murphy review were left out of this bill altogether, like a ban on inducements, where gamblers are encouraged or even rewarded with free money to keep gambling. Inducements are abhorrent, and they drive compulsive gambling and target our most vulnerable.

Another way that this bill fails and where I feel that the policy makers from the government have caved to that pressure is that there's nothing here about a national gambling regulator, a national watchdog that is solely responsible for all licensing and regulation and is tasked with reducing gambling harm. Without a national regulator, we cannot have consistent monitoring and enforcement. It's just not possible. Any changes to the law will only be effective if they're supported by strong national oversight. As submissions to the inquiry have explained, there is already evidence of the gambling industry engaging in regulatory shopping across state and territory borders. The NT racing commission has become a de facto regulator because it offers the lowest taxes and the least stringent regulation. It's just simply unacceptable.

This process has been flawed from the start. We've had to wait over 1,000 days to get the government response to the Murphy review, and then that response was released on the afternoon of budget night, when the nation's political journalists were quite literally locked up in Parliament House without their laptops and phones so they couldn't properly report on it. Then the response and the legislation that followed were grossly inadequate, but that's not all. The consultation process on the new legislation was flawed. Some gambling-harm prevention stakeholders were invited with less than 24 hours notice, and then that consultation was short and crowded, without opportunities to meaningfully engage and to raise concerns. The department has been unable to provide evidence for multiple parts of the bill, which diverges from the recommendations of the Murphy report, and the likelihood is that they can't. They can't, because there is no solid evidence. The Murphy review was the solid evidence, and this bill just doesn't stack up. These decisions, in my opinion, are purely political. They're about serving corporate interests and protecting party revenue provided by the gambling industry. The government says that what it's doing is sensible and is landing somewhere in the middle between the two opposing sides and entrenched views. But when one of those sides is the gambling lobby and the other side is people who are dying because of gambling addictions, landing in the middle does not make sense whatsoever.

The sensible centre is arbitrary when it comes to issues like gambling, where the choice is clear between public harm mitigation and corporate profit because four in five Australians support a ban on gambling ads, and there's major support across all voting intentions. The government needs to listen to this public opinion and be brave to stand up for Australians and to keep them safe. It has an opportunity here to do that by improving these laws before they are passed. The crossbench will not waive this bill through in its current form. We will keep pushing for what Peta Murphy actually recommended in that report—a total ban on gambling advertising, regardless of whether it's delivered online or broadcast on platforms. At the very least, and I mean at the very least, the government should change the opt-out requirement for online ads to opt in. That would mean that people wouldn't see ads unless they actively choose to. I'll be moving an amendment to that effect.

The crossbench want the government to implement all 31 recommendations of the Murphy report in full. We want a national regulator. We want a ban on inducements, and we have proposed a raft of amendments to make that happen. But watch the government. They'll try to ignore them all or try and find some middle ground for what is clearly never going to happen when people are literally dying in Australia from harm and addiction from gambling. But with your help, we can keep the pressure on and make this bill the strongest that it can be.

Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 and the National Self-Exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026 are important reforms. They are legislative changes that recognise a simple reality: gambling in Australia has changed dramatically over the past decade yet our laws have struggled to keep pace. Once upon a time, if someone wanted to place a bet, they made a conscious decision to do so. They might have gone to a TAB, picked up the phone or visited a venue. Today, gambling sits in every pocket. It's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through a device that millions of Australians carry with them everywhere they go. That unprecedented accessibility has brought unprecedented harm. This is a new reality that we cannot ignore.

The Albanese government takes seriously its responsibility to protect Australians, particularly children, young people and vulnerable Australians from the harms of online gambling. This legislation is about ensuring that Australians remain in control of what they see, when they see it, and how often they are exposed to gambling advertising. Most importantly, it is about making sure that children can grow up loving sport without believing gambling is simply another part of the game.

I've spoken to teachers who have told me some of their students are already using gambling apps. Think about that for a moment. Teachers are now raising concerns, not simply about excessive screen time or social media but about children engaging with gambling products. That should concern every member of this House, because if young Australians are interacting with gambling before they're even old enough to place a legal bet then something has gone seriously wrong. We cannot pretend this has happened by accident. It is the result of years of gambling becoming normalised in Australian life. It's become woven into our sporting broadcasts, our entertainment and our online experiences in ways that would have seemed unimaginable only a generation ago.

Now, I love Australian sport. Like millions of Australians, I enjoy sitting down with family and friends to watch the footy or the cricket. Sport has always been one of the great unifiers of our country. It brings communities together; teaches teamwork, resilience and respect. It gives young Australians heroes to look up to and dreams to chase. But today it is becoming almost impossible to turn on a football match without being bombarded by sports gambling advertisements.

Before the opening bounce, there are betting odds. During the breaks, there are gambling commercials. At half-time, there are gambling promotions and live bet trackers. As soon as the final siren sounds, the advertisements begin again. If you're watching online, they follow you there too through streaming services, social media, news sites, podcasts and search engine results. Quite frankly, they have become unavoidable. That constant saturation has consequences. When children repeatedly see gambling promoted alongside every major sporting event, it sends a dangerous message. It tells them that betting is simply part of supporting a team. It tells them that gambling is as normal as buying a ticket, wearing a guernsey or cheering from the stands. That is not the message we should be sending to the next generation.

Our children deserve the chance to fall in love with sport because of the skill, the teamwork, the courage and the community it inspires, not because they know the betting odds before they know the team lists. This legislation recognises that distinction. It seeks to restore a healthier relationship between Australians and the sports they love. Importantly, these reforms are not about telling adults that they cannot make their own choices. Australians are perfectly capable of making informed decisions. This government recognises that. What we reject is the idea that every Australian, whether or not they gamble, should be subjected to an endless stream of advertising designed to encourage them to place just one more bet.

The purpose of this bill is to strike the right balance. It protects individual choice while recognising that governments have a responsibility to reduce harm where harm is clearly occurring, and it reflects the expectations of Australian families who simply want to watch their favourite sporting team without gambling being pushed into their living room every few minutes. This parliament has an opportunity to reset that balance, and I believe we have a responsibility to do so. This legislation achieves that balance through a comprehensive package of reforms that recognise that gambling harm cannot be addressed by a single measure alone. Instead, it tackles the issue from multiple angles, reducing unnecessary exposure to wagering advertising, strengthening consumer protections, disrupting illegal operators and closing loopholes that have allowed harmful products to flourish online.

At the heart of these reforms is a simple objective: we want Australians to be able to enjoy sport without gambling constantly being placed in front of them. That means changing the environment that has developed around our major sporting codes. For too long, wagering companies have been allowed to attach themselves to some of Australia's most cherished sporting moments. The result has been the gradual erosion of the line between watching the game and betting on the game. That line should never have become so blurred.

From 1 January 2027, gambling, advertising during live sport will be significantly restricted. Television advertising will be prohibited during live sporting broadcasts between 6 am and 8.30 pm, ensuring that children and families watching weekend football, cricket and other major sporting events are no longer subjected to a relentless stream of wagering promotions. Outside live sport, strict limits will apply to the volume of gambling advertising shown during daytime and evening viewing hours. These are sensible reforms. They recognise that Australians should not have to accept gambling advertisements as the price of enjoying free-to-air television.

The legislation also addresses another growing concern. Increasingly, wagering companies have relied on celebrities, current athletes and online influencers to promote betting products. This has been particularly effective in targeting younger audiences. Many young Australians spend far more time watching content creators online than they do watching traditional television. Those personalities carry enormous influence. When gambling is promoted by sporting heroes or internet personalities that young people admire, the advertising becomes more persuasive and far more difficult for younger audiences to critically assess.

That is why this legislation prohibits gambling promotions by celebrities, athletes and influencers. Sporting stars should be remembered for their achievements on the field, not for encouraging young Australians to download betting apps. Likewise, influencers should not be used as a back door to market gambling products to audiences that include children and teenagers. The connection between sporting success and gambling promotion has become far too close. This legislation begins to untangle that relationship.

It also extends beyond our television screens. Australians increasingly consume entertainment through streaming services, podcasts, social media platforms, music applications and online news. The advertising industry knows that. Gambling companies know that. They have followed Australians wherever they spend their time online. That is why these reforms include comprehensive restrictions on online wagering advertising. Whether someone is watching a video, scrolling through social media, listening to a podcast or searching for information online, the expectation should not be that gambling advertisements are waiting around every corner.

Online platforms will have a clear responsibility to comply with these reforms. If they choose not to implement the necessary restrictions, then the consequence is equally clear: they simply cannot display gambling advertising. The responsibility rests with the platforms because they are best placed to control what appears before Australian users.

Importantly, the legislation also provides users with greater control over their own online experience. Australians who maintain wagering accounts will have access to improved opt-out functionality and family-friendly account settings, giving individuals more say over whether gambling advertising appears in their digital environment. Technology should empower consumers, not manipulate them. Australians deserve greater control over what enters their homes, appears on their phones and reaches their children.

Another welcome reform contained within this legislation is a prohibition on gambling advertising appearing on sporting jerseys and within stadiums. For many children, their first football jersey is something they genuinely treasure. It represents the club they dream of playing for one day. Those symbols should not become walking billboards for gambling companies. Likewise, our sporting venues should celebrate athletic excellence and community spirit, not serve as permanent advertisements for wagering operators. Removing gambling branding from jerseys and stadiums sends an important message: our sporting culture should be defined by the game itself, by the players who inspire us and by the communities who support them, not by the betting markets that seek to profit from every contest. Most importantly, they are reforms that put Australian families ahead of the commercial interests of the gambling industry.

These reforms extend well beyond advertising restrictions. Reducing exposure to gambling advertisements is only one part of the solution. If we are serious about reducing gambling harm, we must also strengthen consumer protections, disrupt illegal operators and close the loopholes that continue to exploit vulnerable Australians. That is exactly what this legislation does. A key feature of the bill is the strengthening of BetStop, Australia's national self-exclusion register. Since its introduction in 2023, more than 61,000 Australians have registered to exclude themselves from licensed online wagering services. Behind every one of those registrations is someone making a difficult decision to seek help. That decision deserves the support of this parliament.

The review of BetStop found that public awareness remains far too low. Only one in four Australians know the service exists. Even among people who have gambled in the previous 12 months, awareness rises only to one in three. That tells us there is more work to do. These amendments will strengthen BetStop by providing greater protection from gambling, marketing and inducements for those who have chosen to self-exclude. The accompanying cost recovery levy bill will also support the national awareness campaign, ensuring more Australians know where to turn before gambling harm takes hold.

The legislation also delivers stronger action against illegal offshore gambling operators. Australians deserve the protections provided under Australian law. Illegal operators sit outside those safeguards and expose consumers to greater financial risks with little accountability. This legislation is designed to help Australians, from teenagers to the elderly. At its core, this legislation will better protect children from exposure to gambling and wagering products. Australians experiencing gambling harm will have stronger support and more effective pathways to seek help. Greater enforcement powers will help disrupt illegal operators seeking to circumvent Australian law.

Importantly, existing regulatory gaps will be closed to ensure emerging gambling products cannot exploit loopholes at the expense of consumers and communities. Most importantly, it ensures that from 1 January 2027 Australian families can enjoy the sports they love without gambling dominating the experience. Like so many people in this room, I have a young adult child. I've got many nephews and nieces that are in that target audience. They've got friends at school who've just left school who are struggling with addiction. They need every single support we can offer them and that's exactly what this bill does.

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

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will be granted leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.