Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The former member for Dunkley, Peta Murphy, was a great friend of mine. In fact, she liked to tease me from time to time. When I was giving speeches in this place, if I didn't focus on the material, she used to call it 'story time with Josh', and only Peta could distil it down to that in such a great way. But I will try not to have 'story time with Josh', Peta. I will try and do your incredible report justice.

I want to start my speech by paying tribute to Peta Murphy, who, through the work of a committee report, has left an incredible legacy. All of us in this place feel a sense of responsibility and a sense of duty to honour Peta, and I know the minister, who is next to me, feels that deeply. She also was a great friend of Peta's. We miss Peta very much and we will continue on with the work she has left us—and that can't be said of every member of parliament—via a committee report. This parliament feels so strongly about the work that was done in that committee report, and that shows the intellectual bravery that Peta Murphy brought when she came into this place to this and her skill as a parliamentarian. We miss her very much.

The toxic relationship between gambling and sport is one that, frankly, every single member of this place understands we need to do something about it. The way in which it has really ingrained itself in the culture of sport in this country has meant that not only is there a cultural aspect of it but also a reliance on it, There is a toxic reliance on gambling—on gambling advertising, on this cycle of companies looking to target the most vulnerable people who are susceptible to their advertising, and sporting codes and organisations who are reliant on the money that gambling produces. Football clubs, with their pokie licences; commercial television; local sporting clubs; stadiums—it is everywhere.

There will be repercussions from this bill. This is not a bill where there aren't going to be any consequences in making the changes that we are putting forward in this bill. This will have an impact and it is real, but we have to do it. We have to break this nexus and this connection between gambling advertising and sport. When I think about my eight-year-old daughter, who loves the Carlton Football Club—that is one of the proudest things that I have been able to impart on her. We watch games together; I love watching the footy with her. And then you see the ads pop up—the multies, the betting, the celebrity endorsements—and you think, 'What is going to be left inside this child's mind about what she is actually watching?' It should be all about the game, not about the odds. We need to do something about that and that is what this bill does.

Unfortunately, it is not easy. The number of reforms that we have in this bill—I'm going to run through them in a moment—is significant. And, like every piece of legislation where we sit down with people across the parliament and we work out how we're going to pass it through the Senate, I know there has been a huge amount of work done by the minister and members in this place. Hopefully, it will be a great moment where we can make significant changes to improve the situation where gambling isn't investing in our sport and our TV channels.

I also want to mention a bit of history. The closest example of what we're trying to do here is when our country got rid of tobacco advertising. Actually, if you look at the timeline of how long it took for us, as a country, to take out tobacco advertising, it was significant. The first health warnings in Australia about tobacco were introduced in 1973. There was a radio advertising ban on tobacco three years later, in 1976. Australia subsequently banned tobacco advertising in newspapers and magazines in 1990—14 years later. The Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act 1992 imposed much broader national restrictions on the broadcasting and publication of tobacco advertising from 1993.

It took Australia 20 years to take away tobacco advertising. Think about the media markets and the state of journalism in Australia in the nineties versus what it is now. If you look at the commercial advertising in the newspaper classifieds—around $4 billion a year was going into classified advertising back then; it's now about $200 million. All of that directly funds journalism in this country. All of that directly funds free and independent media. All of that funds commercial television and the sort of other advertising that funds Australian programs, and Australian content and kids programs, Australian industry and Australian jobs. It took 20 years to take away tobacco advertising, at a time when media advertising revenue was going up.

Right now, we are seeing the greatest transition away from independent news, from journalism, from the advertising that funds the important pillars of our democracy, not to mention our local sporting clubs and our sporting codes. And we're entering into a time when money is being moved into large tech companies and being invested in artificial intelligence. It's moving away from holding people and moving away from being invested back into the institutions that help create all of the different parts of our democracy and is moving towards other parts that make our democracy and our truth and our politics so much more difficult.

This is not simple. This is actually really difficult. I know that people out there ask: 'Well, why not just do a full ban? Why not just do it?' They are legitimate questions, and Peta Murphy laid the groundwork and the pathway against which we all must hold ourselves. But this also is real, and the consequences of this will be real: there will be millions of dollars less for journalism, for institutions, for sport—to invest in women's sport, in the AFLW. All of these things are going to need time to adjust. But we need to make sure that we are true to the point of what this bill is all about, and that is breaking the nexus and the connection between gambling and sport. Even though there will be consequences, we need to push on with these reforms.

The bill will make a significant number of changes to the number of ads on TV, making sure that gambling ads won't be on TV during sport, especially during specific hours. There'll be frequency caps outside of those hours. I also want to mention the fact that, whenever you're watching sport and you see these celebrity endorsements parading as being part of the television coverage, it's actually just an endorsement by Sportsbet or Ladbrokes or one of these other companies. All of that will be banned. Gambling advertising is not going to be normalised—this culture of 'what's happening over at the odds?' All that part of our radio and television coverage of sport is going to be gone.

When kids walk into a stadium, they're not going to see advertising all around the stadium. They're not going to see it on jerseys. They're not going to hear it on the radio while they're going to and from school. The way this bill outlines the online ban basically means that, as a parent, I am going to be able to opt out or switch off all gambling advertising on the streaming platforms in my home. That is a power that we want to give to each and every parent around Australia: if you don't want your kids to see gambling advertising, you can do something pretty simple and click 'opt out'.

If platforms choose not to have that function, the alternative is no gambling advertising on their platforms; they have to comply with this, or the answer is no gambling advertising. Here is the choice that this bill gives parents: either, if online platforms, social media and tech companies choose to not comply with the law and not provide these three steps of verification and options for parents, they will have no gambling advertising or, if they want to have gambling advertising on their platforms, they have to give parents and other people the choice and the ability to turn it off. That is a power that does not exist right now.

When you think about all of that and you think about my eight-year-old daughter, when we go to the footy and the MCG, there will be no gambling around the MCG anymore. There will be no gambling on the stadium. There will be no gambling advertising on the uniforms. When we travel to and from school, there will be no gambling advertising. When we're watching the footy at home, when we're watching it on 7plus, there will be no gambling advertising. We will have created a gambling advertising free home. That sounds pretty good to me, and that's exactly what this bill will be able to do.

There are also much broader reforms that are contained in this bill that I don't want to run out of time on, because they are significant and they have required a lot of work, and I'm really proud that we are taking them. We are going to ensure that illegal offshore gambling providers are reducing their gambling harm and ensure that anyone participating in gambling in Australia is doing so within the safety of Australian consumer protections. We're strengthening BetStop, which has helped thousands of Australians pull themselves out of problem gambling. We are going to address harmful and emerging online gambling products, including banning online keno and foreign match lotteries.

If you want to just pause on online keno, these are online pocket pokies where people can just click pokie and pokie time and time again. We see the ways in which people lose themselves in casinos until all hours of the morning. Well, just imagine lying in bed, pressing the pokie over and over again. People are losing thousands of dollars. All of that will be banned under this bill, and I think that is a fantastic reform. I've never spent a cent at a pokie. I've never spent a cent with any of these companies. I've never spent a cent on Sportsbet or Ladbrokes or any of them. That's a personal choice I make. But I think this is a wonderful thing, where we are not making it easy for these companies to just take money off people lying in bed with an algorithm and a formula that is not designed for people to win. It is designed for companies to make money.

The impact on foreign match lotteries also will mean that the local small businesses that are selling lottery tickets aren't going to have these foreign lotteries able to undercut them and have situations where people can buy tickets in offshore lotteries. People want to be a part of the lotto. My grandmother used to love doing that. I've never really seen the appeal, but at least we will ensure that Australians are buying from local newsagencies, and I think that's a good thing. There are many other things that this bill does. It closes regulatory gaps that allow some operators to offer lottery-style products under the guise of trade promotions and reward clubs. There are a number of other things that we're going to ensure that this bill does.

But I want to make this point: when negotiating anything in this parliament, we don't have the numbers, as the Labor Party, to pass everything through the Senate. That requires us to sit down with people and negotiate. It requires us to negotiate with either the Liberal Party or the Greens. There have been bills where we've gone through one, and there have been bills where we've gone through the other. Ultimately, that's about respecting our democracy. Obviously, I want to see a whole range of things that this bill makes an incredible contribution to. One of the things that we passed in our national conference was around inducements and the way in which these companies are offering people extra incentives to continue gambling and targeting the most susceptible people on that. I think that in the negotiations that is obviously something that the Labor Party in our conference said that we want to see included in the bill, and I know that there is a lot of work going on behind the scenes. I am working as closely as I can with my colleagues, and I know everyone is working to make sure we get something through this House and we get these reforms in.

That is because they will make a difference. They will make a profound difference. They'll give parents the power to turn off gambling advertising. They'll mean that, when young kids are walking into the colosseum of Australian football, they're not looking around seeing BetStop and Ladbrokes; they're walking around and seeing the great Australian athletes, men and women competing on the best sporting field in the country and possibly the world. It took 20 years from the moment in which tobacco advertising and health warnings were issued in Australia for a bill to come in. Well, we are doing this. This has never been done before, and this is a huge set of reforms that will have a big impact on breaking that nexus between gambling and sport. I thank every member who has contributed to this, the minister and so many others. Most of all, I thank Peta Murphy, who laid down the path, and now it's our job to walk down it.

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

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

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

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

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

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Youth) | Link to this | Hansard source

Or pregnant mothers.

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

Or pregnant mothers. Thank you, member for Moncrieff. When it comes to gambling, there is a safe level of use. Many people enjoy the occasional bet. Many people enjoy more than the occasional bet with money that they can afford to lose, knowing when to stop and understanding the loss probability. It's not something I do very often, just around the spring carnival and at country races. Normally, my inadequacy in punting warns me off for another year, but it is fun. I don't think this bill as introduced passes the test that we want for having some advertising but making sure we protect vulnerable people and children.

We're three years on from the Peta Murphy report. In June 2023, a committee of this parliament handed down 31 recommendations, and it was bipartisan. Members from both sides put their names to those recommendations. As many people have said, this parliament should be incredibly proud of Peta Murphy for what she did in this place and everyone misses her. I want to appreciate the work of the deputy chair of that committee—the member for Cowper, Pat Conaghan—who also contributed greatly. I am very critical of the government for the delay in acting on elements of that report. I think more than three years passing between that report and a bill is not acceptable—three years in which ads kept running, losses kept climbing and children kept being exposed to gambling advertising. When the government did finally respond to the Murphy report, it did so on budget day, with the Press Gallery locked away in a budget lock-up. I think that it should have had more fanfare and should have had more transparency and should have been worked through more than that.

The issue, as many members of this place have said, is that we love enjoying sport with our children, and it's something that I do. It's something that many people do. It's a way of bonding. It's a way of talking about athleticism, teamwork and all sorts of things. With me, it's more soccer than anything else, particularly the Premier League. When you're watching a game, whether it be AFL, NRL, Premier League or A-League, you don't want to have that experience inundated with gambling ads and discussion of odds. I think that most people have reached the conclusion that there's just been an overload of gambling ads during sports broadcasts.

During the last parliament, when I was sitting on the backbench here, Peter Dutton, the former opposition leader, stood at this dispatch box and gave a budget reply speech that proposed a reform of an ad ban an hour before, during and an hour after live sports broadcast. Again, I think that was the then leader of the opposition expressing a frustration that the government was so recalcitrant to do something and that we needed to put something on the table to say that we need to do something about this and that we need to get these gambling ads out of our live sport. I think that was a worthwhile reform. I don't think it's the only thing that should have been done, but it's a worthwhile thing.

I want to make a couple more points. Firstly, on streaming services, there have been discussions of opt in and opt out, and that will continue to be a negotiation. I think opt in is a good system if it can be managed, but, if this parliament negotiates and decides for an opt-out situation for streaming, my strong view is that that opt out should be very, very clear and very, very easy to do. At the moment, it is not. We found that during the World Cup with the SBS. If you wanted to opt out, it wasn't clear and it wasn't easy. You had to go to settings and you had to do a number of things, and, consequently, most people didn't do it. Opt in is ideal. If it's opt out, it needs to be very, very clear, and streaming services need to make that opt-out option really, really clear.

I do I just want to talk a bit about carve-outs for racing and that distinction. There is a distinction between racing and the other sports that I've mentioned—rugby league, rugby union, soccer and Australian rules football. Horseracing and gambling are intertwined in a way that other sports aren't, and that has been the case for almost all of Australia's history, and I think we need to understand that. I've got a really strong, vibrant thoroughbred-racing industry. I've also got pacing and greyhounds as well, but the thoroughbred-racing industry in my electorate, as many country MPs have—I know we talk about the Melbourne Cup and the spring racing carnival, and we talk about the carnivals in other metropolitan cities, but it really is and can be the lifeblood of many people in regional communities. I've got the Seymour Racing Club, the Echuca Racing Club and the Kilmore Racing Club in my electorate, to name a few.

We do need to make sure that what we do does not affect, firstly, free-to-air broadcasting of sport, because a lot of people can't afford the cable services, the pay TV, so they want to be able to watch sport on TV, and we can't have the unintended consequences of significantly damaging racing, particularly in regional areas. That's the balance that everyone's looking for here. In an ideal world you'd go a lot further, but you recognise that things that you do, regulations that go too far, might adversely affect great industries like racing and people's ability to access sport via live free-to-air services.

I'll leave my comments there. I'm disappointed it's taken this long to get a bill on the table. I don't think the main bill is adequate. I believe the negotiations are ongoing, and I look forward to seeing what comes back. This parliament has a duty to do something about this, and the test it sets is: does what we do protect children and the most vulnerable people from obsessive gambling advertising and gambling advertising during sporting contests?

Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the gambling legislation before the House today. This is an area where I think we need to start from a fairly simple proposition: adults should be free to make choices for themselves, but with that freedom comes personal responsibility. But government also has a responsibility to protect vulnerable Australians, particularly children, where products or commercial practices can cause general harm. Those principles are not contradictory; in fact, good public policy requires us to hold them together.

For the overwhelming majority of Australians, buying a lottery ticket, having a punt on the races or putting a small bet on a sporting event is entertainment. Government should not treat every Australian who enjoys those activities as though they're incapable of making their own decisions. But, equally, we should never minimise gambling harm. Australians lose more per person to gambling than people in any other country, with total losses now exceeding $36 billion a year. Behind that extraordinary figure are people who have suffered financial distress, damaged relationships and profound impacts on their mental health, and families who have carried those consequences alongside them. There is a role for government here, but the test of reform cannot simply be where the government has done something; the test is whether it has done the right thing, and whether the legislation is targeted, evidence based and capable of reducing harm without creating new and unnecessary consequences. Unfortunately, these bills do not yet meet that test.

The Murphy inquiry reported in June 2023 after undertaking extensive work, and delivered 31 recommendations. Australians have now waited more than three years for the government to bring forward this legislative response. After that amount of time, we were entitled to expect legislation that was coherent, carefully designed and able to withstand scrutiny. Instead, there remain serious gaps. The coalition wants meaningful and workable gambling reform. We want the legislation to succeed. But, after three years of delay, parliament has an obligation to strengthen the bills where their protections fall short. We're engaging constructively with the government because gambling reform is too important to be reduced to political theatre. There are negotiations occurring about how this legislation can be strengthened, and I hope that the government and the minister listen carefully to the concerns that have been raised.

One of those concerns is gambling advertising. There's been some rewriting of history in this debate. Australians should remember that restrictions on gambling advertising during live sport did not suddenly appear with these bills. The former coalition government introduced the live sport restrictions that came into effect in 2018. Under the existing regime, gambling advertising is prohibited during live sport between 5 am and 8.30 pm. including during breaks in play and for five minutes either side of the event. That was an important reform because sport should be something families can enjoy together without children being conditioned to believe that every kick, every try and every result needs to have a price attached to it.

The scale of gambling advertising in this country demonstrates why this matters. The Australian Communications and Media Authority found that, in a single 12-month period, more than one million gambling advertisements were broadcast across free-to-air television and radio. Online, Australians are being exposed to more than half a million gambling advertisements. That is not advertising at the margins; it's saturation. When gambling messages are appearing at that scale, they become part of the background noise of everyday life. They normalise gambling. They embed it into the experience of watching sport. For people already struggling with gambling harm, that constant exposure can be deeply damaging.

There are measures in this bill that move in the right direction, but there are also aspects that require substantial improvement. The bill proposes a general cap of three wagering advertisements per hour on television between 6 am and 8.30 pm. I struggle with the proposition that we can say that we're fundamentally changing children's exposure to gambling while still designing a legislative framework capable of delivering three gambling advertisements every hour through much of the day.

There are also serious questions about streamed live sport. The existing online rules contain strong protections during play, during breaks and immediately before and after an event. We should be strengthening those protections, not creating new opportunities for gambling advertising to find its way back into the family viewing experience. You cannot credibly say that you're breaking the connection between gambling and sport while continuing to permit gambling advertisements during live sporting events. That is the contradiction at the heart of this aspect of the bill.

Sport is one of the great institutions of Australian life. It brings families together. It builds communities. It teaches young people about teamwork, discipline, resilience and competition. I want the next generation of Australians to grow up loving sport because of the contest, because of their team and because of the excitement of the game, not because they've been taught from childhood to associate every result with a bet. We can't go back and undo the gambling harm that's already occurred in Australian families, but this parliament does have control over what happens next.

And then there are inducements. This is an area where the evidence has been particularly confronting. The Murphy inquiry did not equivocate. Recommendation 16 called for online gambling inducements and inducement advertising to be prohibited without delay. The committee was particularly concerned by the role of VIP programs and inducements in encouraging people to continue gambling and losing. Yet, three years later, this bill still does not adequately deal with that problem. The evidence heard by the Senate committee recently about the treatment of vulnerable gamblers and the use of VIP account management, bonus bets and other inducements should concern every member of this parliament.

Government has an obligation to act where commercial practices are deliberately exploiting vulnerability. That's exactly where targeted regulation belongs. At the same time, we need to remember that legitimate gambling related industries employ Australians, sustain businesses and make significant contributions to communities. Racing in particular supports trainers, breeders, jockeys, stable workers, veterinarians, hospitality venues, transport businesses and communities right across regional Australia. We should be capable of protecting vulnerable people without pretending that every person who enjoys a bet needs government to save them from themselves. That is the balance that the coalition is seeking.

That brings me to a part of this bill that I'd like to spend some time addressing because its consequences are very real for the people in my electorate of McPherson. Schedule 4 proposes to prohibit foreign matched lotteries. Now, I've spoken to many across this chamber about this. That might sound like a fairly technical change buried within a much larger gambling reform bill. It's not. For one Australian owned business based in my electorate, it is an extinction notice.

The Lottery Office operates from Robina in my electorate on the Gold Coast. Its parent company, Global Players Network, is Australian owned and operates under a Northern Territory gaming licence. The government's own review identifies the Lottery Office as one of the licensed providers of foreign matched lotteries operating in Australia. This business supports around 50 jobs in my electorate, as well as expenditure with many other local businesses and suppliers of whom I have had the opportunity to speak. These are not theoretical jobs. They're not figures in a departmental briefing note. They're real people who go to work each morning. They pay their taxes, they have mortgages and rent, they raise families, they buy their groceries locally, and they contribute to the Gold Coast community in spades. They fund our sporting clubs and our community organisations, and they fill the funding gaps left by government. And this parliament is now being asked to vote for legislation that could potentially wipe them out.

This isn't gambling reform; it's a Labor protection job. Roger Cook, the Premier of Western Australia, has asked Canberra to effectively kill off a legal Gold Coast competitor to shield Western Australia's state owned lottery. The Prime Minister and the minister, through this legislation, will simply be rolling over to support their Labor mates.

Before doing that, members on that side of the chamber should understand exactly what this product is. A foreign matched lottery is materially different from a synthetic lottery, where there is no underlying ticket purchased in the relevant lottery and the operator itself pays an amount based on the result. That distinction matters. It matters even more when we look at the evidence the government itself commissioned.

The department of infrastructure undertook a specific review into online keno and foreign matched lotteries. That review was published earlier this year, and what did it find? It said:

The harms associated with … foreign-matched lotteries are not well understood.

It said:

Due to the lack of available data, the review could not identify a different harm profile or customer spending profile for foreign-matched lotteries compared with Australian-exclusive lotteries.

It recorded:

All foreign-matched lottery providers advised that winnings had been paid to customers ...

The Northern Territory regulator advised that complaints it had seen related to identity verification, and that consumers received their winnings once those verification issues were resolved. Most importantly, the department did not respond to that evidence by recommending that these businesses be banned. The department said that further research was needed to properly understand the risk profile before restrictions were imposed.

The review went so far as to say that 'more evidence' was needed to determine whether further regulation of foreign matched lotteries would actually be 'commensurate with the harms'. That is the government's own department. Only months later, the government's answer is not more research. It's not stronger consumer protections. It's not a nationally consistent regulatory framework. It's not extending appropriate provisions of BetStop or the credit card restriction. It is prohibition.

How did we get from 'we need more evidence before imposing further restrictions' to 'we're going to ban the entire product'? I do not understand it. That's the question the government has not adequately answered, nor was the prohibition on foreign matched lotteries—one of the 31 recommendations of the Murphy report. That inquiry called for major reforms across advertising inducements, consumer protection regulation and research, but it did not make the case that this government is now making for the destruction of this particular business model.

I ask the minister and I ask those opposite: Where is the evidence? What changed between the department's review and the drafting of this legislation? What new harm was identified? What problem emerged that could only be solved by prohibition rather than regulation? And, I ask to the minister sitting at the table, why should around fifty jobs on the Gold Coast, in my electorate, be put on the line before those questions have been answered?

I'm a great believer in personal responsibility. It's why I joined the Liberal Party, but I'm equally a great believer in government taking responsibility for its own decisions. It's very easy, in Canberra, to amend a definition in an act. It takes a few lines on a page. But, when those lines remove the legal basis upon which an Australian business operates, the consequences are not a few lines on a page. They're livelihoods, they're employees sitting around a kitchen table wondering whether their job will exist next year, they're suppliers wondering whether a customer will disappear, and they're people who have built careers in a business that is lawful, licensed and regulated who are being told that Canberra has simply decided that their industry should no longer exist. I cannot support that approach. I say to the minister and I say to the government, deep down, I'm sure you can't either.

There is also an important competition question here. Whatever the government's intention, the practical consequence of this prohibition is to eliminate a regulated competitor from the Australian lottery market and leave the largest incumbent lottery operators facing less competition. That should concern everyone in this parliament who believes in competitive markets.

There are stakeholders arguing strongly on the other side. Lobbyists claiming to represent traditional lottery retailers and newsagents have told the parliament that foreign matched products divert revenue and threaten their businesses. Even if those claims are true, government does not resolve competition between lawful businesses simply by banning one of them. If there's a consumer protection gap, close the gap. If regulation needs to be strengthened, strengthen it. If credit card use presents an unacceptable risk, address it. If consumers need stronger self-exclusion options, build them. Apply the appropriate safeguards consistently, and require every operator to meet them. That is regulation. Simply extinguishing a licensed Australian operator, when the evidence for doing so has not been established, is something very different.

The Gold Coast has been built by people willing to take a risk, build a business, employ others and back their own ingenuity. My electorate is full of those people. It's part of what makes our city so successful. Government should be very careful before it tells one of those businesses: 'You played by the rules, you obtained the licence, you employed Australians and you complied with the regulatory framework, but we've now decided to abolish the framework beneath you anyway.' That destroys confidence well beyond this particular industry. The government should remove the proposed prohibition on foreign matched lotteries from this legislation and, instead, undertake the evidence based work its own department recommended. Gold Coast workers, the hardworking people in my electorate, should not become the collateral damage in a rushed regulatory decision.

In the short time I have left, I'll say that we can preserve the great Australian tradition of enjoying sport without surrounding the next generation with gambling advertising, and we can regulate an industry without sacrificing competition, small business and Australian jobs in the process. That is the balance this parliament should seek and it is the standard against which this legislation should be judged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry to interrupt, Member for Bendigo. Member for Moncrieff, no phones are allowed in the chamber.

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

and I can remember watching that, going: That's shifted. That's changed. That shouldn't be happening. This is what this bill seeks to address. It's minimising the exposure of children to harm. It's being able to watch that game without that interruption.

I acknowledge some of the change that's already happened. As the member for Macnamara said, the AFL moved quickly and has taken the gambling around the stadium off. It was always a shock to see that, and a recall memory for me to see that when we went there, because it didn't happen when we were younger. Banning it from shirts is a big step forward. It's breaking that normalisation of gambling for children so that families can enjoy watching football, watching sport, without that interruption.

With the bill that's before us, what we're trying to do is to ban ads on TV during live sport between 6 am and 8.30 pm and to put a cap on ads outside these hours of three per hour between 6 pm and 8 pm. The bill also seeks to ban gambling promotion by celebrities, athletes and influencers. Those heroes that I just spoke about are being used to target kids and youngsters, especially young men, but this bill aims to stop that. We're banning advertising on stadiums and jerseys, which again seeks to normalise advertising. We're banning radio ads at drop-off and pick-up times. We're banning online advertising, except when users use the opt-out function that allows them to opt out of advertising and apply family-friendly settings.

I think back to the World Cup and how important it would be to make sure that families know that they can do that. The broader reforms in this bill haven't received the attention that they should. The banning of online keno—I talked about phones in this particular reform, which I so desperately want to see passed. Phones just normalised it for so many young people. They could be shopping or at work, and then, all of a sudden, it pops up in their feed, and they give it a go. That shouldn't happen. Our phones should be free of the availability to gamble.

We're expanding and changing BetStop to make sure that it can help more people and to stop it being misused. We're changing the way foreign matched lotteries work and function. We are tackling the illegal offshore gambling providers and reducing the impact of gambling harm to ensure that people participating in gambling in Australia do so with the safety of Australian consumer protections. I was shocked and horrified to hear through another committee, where we were looking at a treaty, about the influence and the way in which overseas gambling is having an impact on Australia, and it is good to see some of the recommendations of the treaties committee report being picked up and addressed with this legislation.

We are cracking down on fake lotteries operating under the pretence of trade promotion. I'm not saying that everybody engages with them, but the insidious way that they use Facebook, they use marketing apps, they use shopping apps—before you know it, you're hooked and part of a gambling app. These are just some of the many legislation reforms that are here, and they are an incredibly important step to go forward. We do not want a case where gambling continues to be normalised for children.

This is a huge step forward, and I want to really say that to the people in my community. This is about those young men and women at the Lake View Hotel or at the All Seasons after work, making sure that, if they want to have a bet, it's done safely and they're not being chased by gambling throughout their work day. This is about making sure that families can watch their football or their sporting without being bombarded by ads. This is about ensuring that we're supporting those children, that not more kids are talking about gambling ads, that more kids are not talking about betting or learning about our capitals based upon where racetracks may be, and that they're not learning their times tables or how to do mathematics by being able to understand the form guide.

We can catch those one or two kids that might become problem gamblers if it is that simple, if it is that one or two. But, when it becomes a classroom, it becomes so much harder for us as a community to catch. This is about making sure that the next generation isn't being chased by gambling on their phone. Gambling breaks families. It's insidious.

Gambling addiction is one of the hardest things for people to break. I can remember the words of my father over and over again: 'Just one more bet. This one will get us out. Just one more bet.' I can remember the way in which my mum would try and hide money, the way in which we as girls would beg him not to go, and the nights that we lost travelling to cities to go to racetracks or to different gambling opportunities. I've never put money in a poker machine. I had a Sportsbet account at one stage because I was always interested in the odds at election time, but I'm not a gambler. I think it's because I grew up in a household with a problem gambler, and I don't want any child to have that experience.

What we can do in this bill is find the balance and restore the balance. We can minimise children's exposure to harmful wagering advertising. We can break the link between sport and wagering and restore that love of the game without being bombarded. We can reduce the risk and targeting of wagering in advertising and ensure that that great pastime remains a great pastime for people and doesn't chase them when they wake up in the morning, when they're at home or when they're in the workplace; that it's done in a safe way; and that, if they need help, they can get help.

Angie Bell (Moncrieff, Liberal National Party, Shadow Minister for Youth) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. I want to thank the member for Nicholls for his outstanding contribution to this debate earlier. He highlighted some concerns very similar to those I have with Labor's bill as well.

I want to begin with something very simple. This debate is not about telling responsible Australian adults how to spend their money. That's their choice. That's their freedom of choice. It's not about telling someone who enjoys a punt on the Melbourne Cup that they shouldn't have one. I, indeed, enjoy that myself. It's not about telling families who buy a lottery ticket on a Saturday that they are doing something wrong somehow. And it's certainly not about treating every Australian who places a bet as a problem gambler. Most Australians understand the difference between entertainment and addiction, and most Australians take responsibility for their own decisions. I believe in that personal responsibility, as a Liberal.

As the shadow minister for youth, my greatest concern lies with our young people, particularly our children, because children don't get to make the same informed choices that adults do. They don't have the same understanding of risk. They don't have the financial independence or maturity to understand the consequences of addiction. And yet we are allowing gambling to become increasingly normalised in the environments where our children spend their time. Around 600,000 Australian teenagers under the age of 18 gamble each year. That's a big number—600,000. It's not an abstract statistic. It's sons and daughters. It's young people sitting on the couch, watching the footy with their families. It's our responsibility to protect those young people.

I want to share a story I was told in a meeting this week with the Salvation Army, who support those who are most vulnerable in our community. It's the story of a 17-year-old. Let's call him Kyle. He was living in a youth refuge when he opened up about his gambling addiction. He'd been gambling on a sports betting app since he got his first job—good on you, Kyle—at 14. He said: 'I pay rent, bet the rest and get my mates to buy me food. But they know when I win I'll pay them back.' It doesn't leave much wriggle room, does it? Kyle's story really stayed with me because, at 17, he should be thinking about schoolwork, his mates and his future, not how he's going to find enough money to keep on gambling.

What struck me most is that Kyle didn't start gambling when he turned 18, as an adult. No, he started when he was 14. That's why this debate matters to me as the shadow minister for youth. We can talk about billions of dollars in losses, advertising regulations and industry revenue, and all of those things matter, but behind every statistic is a person encountering harm. Sometimes, that person is a child. As young people are growing up in a world where a gambling advertisement can appear on their phone, on social media, around sport and, increasingly, alongside the entertainment they consume, we need to ask ourselves: what are we teaching our children about gambling? If every time a child watches a sporting match they see gambling promoted, they hear odds discussed as casually as a score and they see betting presented as part of the excitement of sport, we shouldn't be surprised when gambling starts to feel normal to them. Gambling harm is not normal. Sport should be an opportunity to bring families and communities together. Sport delivers opportunities; it should not be a vehicle for marketing gambling products to children. That's why I have serious concerns about this bill in its current form.

The coalition has three fundamental principles when it comes to gambling reform. First, Australians should have choice—choice that a democracy delivers. Second, adults should take responsibility for their decisions and their actions. That is not easy when you're being harmed by gambling. Third, government has an obligation to protect vulnerable Australians, particularly children, from exploitation and harm. Those principles are not contradictory. In fact, I believe they are common sense. We should be able to strike a balance. We can respect the freedom of responsible adults while recognising that children should be protected. We don't expect a 10-year-old to understand the risks associated with every financial product. We don't expect a teenager to have the same capacity for judgement as, say, a 40-year-old. And we shouldn't expect children to navigate an increasingly sophisticated gambling industry on their own.

The industry has enormous resources. It has sophisticated data. It has sophisticated marketing. It understands consumer behaviour. And some operators have demonstrated just how targeted that marketing can become.

The evidence heard by the Senate inquiry last week should concern every member of this parliament. Former NRL player Luke Bateman gave damning evidence about his experience with VIP account managers, including claims that he was targeted with bonus bets, drugs and other inducements. That testimony should make us all stop and think, because, if sophisticated adults can be targeted and manipulated in this way, what chance does a vulnerable young person or a child have?

The advertising provisions are simply not good enough. One of my biggest concerns with this bill is that it does not go far enough to protect children from gambling advertising. On its face, the bill would permit up to three gambling advertisements per hour during children's television—three gambling advertisements per hour. I struggle to understand how that can possibly be described as putting children's welfare first. We know advertising works—businesses don't spend billions of dollars on advertising because it has no influence on behaviour—and, when children repeatedly see gambling associated with sport, excitement, success and social activity, it contributes to the normalisation of gambling.

We need to be particularly careful about the message we are sending to young people, who are already surrounded by digital advertising. A teenager can sit down to watch a game; they can pick up their phone during the game; they can open up social media, watch a sporting highlight or go on to a streaming platform. Everywhere they turn, they can encounter gambling. That's the environment today's young Australians are growing up in, and government needs to recognise that reality.

The government proposes to weaken elements of the gambling advertisement restrictions introduced by the former coalition government. In 2018, the coalition introduced a broadcast and online ban on gambling advertisements during live sport, including the five-minute blackout before and after live sport between 5 am and 8.30 pm. That was an important reform, yet this bill would allow digital platforms to show gambling advertisements during scheduled and unscheduled breaks in live sport, subject to the proposed triple-lock opt-out. For live sport streamed online, gambling advertisements could appear during breaks in play. That means a child watching a game online could potentially see a gambling advertisement immediately after a goal. The five-minute blackout before and after live sport has also been removed for online streaming. So we need to ask: why are we weakening protections when we should be, in fact, strengthening them? The Prime Minister has repeatedly suggested that this government is introducing a ban on gambling advertising during live sport, but the reality is that the coalition government introduced that ban eight years ago. Australians deserve honesty about what this legislation actually does.

None of this is to suggest that gambling is inherently wrong. It's not. Millions of Australians participate in legal forms of gambling—we know that.

But we cannot ignore the harm experienced by some Australians and their family. Australians lost approximately $32.2 billion to legal gambling in 2023-24. Those are among the highest per-capita gambling losses in the world. And the consequences aren't just financial. Gambling addiction can contribute to psychological distress; it can cause relationship breakdown; it can cause or contribute to financial hardship; it can affect people's ability, indeed, to work—and families often carry the consequences alongside the person experiencing their addiction. A parent who can't pay the mortgage, a family struggling to pay the bills, a relationship under enormous strain, children who don't understand why there isn't enough money for the things their friends take for granted—these are the human consequences behind the numbers. And that's why this parliament has a responsibility to get the balance right.

At the same time, I want to make something very clear: we cannot pretend that the gambling and wagering industries don't matter to Australia. They do. The gambling sector directly employs around 33,000 Australians. Gambling-specific taxes generate more than $10 billion for governments around Australia, which contributes to critical infrastructure projects and programs. The racing industry is particularly important to regional communities. Thoroughbred racing contributes more than $13 billion in economic activity and supports more than 100,000 jobs. More than half of those jobs are in regional Australia. So, when we talk about gambling reform, we need to be responsible in our approach. Good regulation should target harm without creating unnecessary harm of its own. That means listening to the community. It means listening to families, to experts, to industry and carefully considering the evidence before making changes that affect thousands of businesses, workers and the community. And that's the track record of the coalition.

When we were in government, we delivered some of the most significant gambling harm minimisation measures in Australia's history. We introduced the broadcast and online ban on gambling advertising during live sport. We legislated BetStop, the national self-exclusion register, to help people who need support to take a break from gambling, and we prohibited betting companies from offering sign-up inducements under the national consumer protection framework. These were meaningful reforms and they were designed to reduce harm while preserving choice for responsible adults. That is the balance we should be seeking today.

What is particularly disappointing about this bill is the time the government has had to get it right. The Murphy inquiry handed down its report in June 2023, and it contained 31 recommendations covering gambling regulation, consumer protections, advertising research and harm minimisation. Australians have waited more than three years for the government's legislative response, and, when that response finally came, it was released on budget day, when journalists were in budget lock-up. That is hardly the kind of open and transparent consultation Australians should expect for legislation of this significance. The government then opposed the current Senate inquiry into this bill.

But ultimately, for me, this debate comes back to the young Australians that we all represent in this place. I think about the young people who are growing up surrounded by technology. They're exposed to more advertising and more commercial influences than any previous generation, and we have a responsibility to make sure that the things we allow into that environment are indeed appropriate. There are many things that aren't. Our children should be able to watch sport without being sold a bet. They should be able to enjoy their favourite team without being told what the odds are. They should be able to watch a game without gambling being presented as an essential part of the experience.

The normalisation of gambling doesn't happen overnight; it happens gradually. A bet here, an ad there, an odds promotion during a game, a bonus bet, and before long something that should be treated as an adult activity becomes just another part of growing up. That's what concerns me. So let me be clear about where the coalition stands: we support reducing gambling harm, we support protecting vulnerable Australians, we support protecting children, we support evidence based reform and we support responsible adults having the freedom to make their own responsible choices.

After three years of delay, deflection and deception over gambling reform, the Albanese government's failings on this bill are inexcusable. Australians can be assured we won't be supporting this deficient legislation in its current form. That said, we appreciate that the government is engaging with the opposition in good faith to strengthen this bill, and those negotiations, of course, are ongoing. There have been a range of negotiations between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, as well as between the communications minister and the shadow minister for communications and digital safety. While the second reading debate is now underway, potential amendments to this bill are still being worked through. These will then return to our party room to be considered and to be finalised.

We need stronger protections around gambling advertising, we need to address gambling inducements that target vulnerable people, and we need to make sure that existing protections are not quietly weakened through changes to online gambling advertising. This isn't about stopping a responsible Australian from having a punt. It's about making sure that a child doesn't grow up believing that gambling is simply part of watching sport. It's about making sure that vulnerable Australians aren't deliberately targeted by sophisticated marketing. And it's about making sure that families don't have to pick up the pieces when gambling does become an addiction. It's about recognising that, while adults can make choices for themselves, children depend on us to make responsible choices for them. As the shadow minister for youth, I take that responsibility the most seriously. We owe our children an environment where they can grow up, play sport, watch sport and enjoy life without gambling being marketed to them at every turn.

Jamie Chaffey (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Agriculture) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. We know Australians are amongst the biggest gamblers in the world. They like to have a go, they like to take a chance and they love to see the long shot come from behind to in front of others despite all odds. But there is a difference between having a couple of dollars on the Melbourne Cup and an addiction that leads to people losing their jobs, their homes and their families. There are people who can safely have a bet every now and then, and then there are those people that cannot put the brakes on, who fall into addiction. And the technology has made it easier and easier for us to lose everything.

In my maiden speech, when I was elected to parliament as the member for Parkes, I spoke about the strengths and the forbearance of my stepfather. My stepfather was a hardworking lucerne farmer who put in long hours to support the family that became his own. He provided financially for us, but it was never enough. It would have been enough if it weren't for the gambling addiction of my mother. The extent of this addiction only became fully known to us in the family when she began to show signs of dementia at the age of 74. It was the only thing that stopped her addiction.

My mother's story is not only her story. It's my stepfather's story. It's my story. It's my sisters' story. It's all of our family's story and our friends' story. Her gambling addiction led to other stresses and sorrows in our family—her violence towards my stepfather and all of the pain that went with that. One disease led to another. There were financial stresses and emotional stresses. It impacted on every part of growing up and has left the scars that will remain with all of us forever. This is the case for almost all Australians who are addicted to gambling. It would be a rare case for someone to suffer this addiction without it becoming a problem for all of those within their life.

My mother found a way to gamble wherever she was, whenever she could, whether it was the pokies or the horses. When she became less mobile in her elderly years, it was phone accounts. Today, you don't have to go down to the TAB or to the pokies to hand over your pay packet. You can do it online in the comfort of your own home. You can do it secretly, unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge the damage it's doing to you or to your family. You can gamble all day, every day, spending every last dollar and then some. Gambling is accessible everywhere—in thousands of different forms, right across Australia. The lure of a better bet or just forgetting your own life for a while is just too great for some of those who can't see it any other way.

In the end, not only are Australians the biggest gamblers; they are also the biggest losers. The St Vincent de Paul Society submission on this bill stated that Australians lost $36 billion on gambling in the 12 months to March 2026. That's $1,635 per adult. Instead of going into the budget for the rising power bills, for the mortgage payment, for the food, the fuel, the school fees, this money is being fed into pokies. It's being spent on scratchies and keno, on betting on horses and dogs and just about any other kind of sport, and straight off the credit card on online gambling. Giving away money through gambling has unfortunately been normalised right throughout our country. This is despite the sad and terrible stories of so many ordinary people. Some of those stories we heard at last week's Senate inquiry.

Clubs and pubs have always held a place in regional communities as employers, as supporters of our community and as contributors to our economy. About 33,000 Australians work in the gambling sector, and it contributes billions of dollars in wages and economic activity. Gambling specific taxes add more than $10 billion into government budgets to go towards essential services. Horseracing is not only an Australian tradition; it contributes more than $13 billion in economic activity. More than half of the 100,000 jobs in the industry are in regional areas. Charities, not-for-profit organisations and community programs benefit from gambling revenue. There remains a place for clubs and pubs, there is no doubt about that.

There remains a place for horseracing and for sponsorship and for responsible betting in Australia. It is the insidious practices in this sector that are the darkest part: the inducements held out to those who can least afford them, to those who are already in serious trouble. Those practices tell people with an addiction to go on, to have another bet, that this one will 'pay for the rest' and asks them, 'What harm could it do?'

We have heard, over and over again, the harm it can do, and it is considerable harm. The hearings also heard of inducements—such as illegal drugs, hotel rooms, sex workers, games tickets—to keep people gambling. In whose world is this acceptable? Gambling companies are targeting those who have tried to get out of gambling, who have closed their accounts, luring them back into addiction. How is this justifiable? They are offering free bets just to keep gamblers coming back and coming back and coming back again. People have turned to fraud, to stealing from family members and to hurting those around them just to put on the next bet. We need to take action against these inducements, these evil words whispered into the ears of those who are already on their knees.

Why do we need gambling ads during children's television? Why do we need to open the way for more gambling ads during online streaming or live sports? Why do we need businesses personally targeting those who are vulnerable, like my mother? There are people throughout every town, in every community, who are impacted, and the true cost could be hidden for months or even years. The damage can be felt for generations. I know, in this place, we often disagree, but I also know that everyone here today, in this federal parliament, wants to make a positive difference to the lives of those who are suffering this terrible addiction.

All of us would like for no more people within Australia, or their families, to go through the damaging effects of gambling. I know that this damage is something we do not want for future generations. I want my children and my grandchildren to know the difference between having a flutter on the Melbourne Cup and handing over your family's hard-earned savings to gambling. I want my grandchildren to grow up in a safe environment. We need stronger measures to ensure we help protect young people from becoming addicted to gambling. There has been too much delay. It has allowed people to slip through the cracks. It has allowed families to go without and to face the fallout of a family member who has a serious addiction.

I'm sure you've heard all about it, but it cannot be said enough: our approach as a coalition is based on three fundamental principles. First, we are a free and fun-loving country, and Australians deserve choice. Second, adults must be responsible for their own actions and their own decisions. Third, we, as leaders in government, have a real obligation to protect those who are vulnerable, particularly children, from exploitation and harm. These are principles that can work seamlessly together in many other areas. Australians are good people—strong, innovative, enterprising, family people—but, like any person around the world, there are people who are particularly vulnerable.

We cannot throw the doors open to those who would take advantage of them. They are taking advantage of not only the vulnerable but also the families who love them. There is a way to walk the line between protecting the vulnerable and the freedoms of all Australians, but it is not the way you see before you in this legislation. It goes further, but it does not go far enough. While I support tougher measures, this legislation is a missed opportunity to go further and to get it right. I know from experience how deep the cut of gambling addiction can be. I feel very strongly that we should be sparing others from this pain. Gambling causes immeasurable harm, a harm that can never be conveyed in dollars. It is important to see this important concern on the table. It is a pity that, in future years, this legislation will mean that it needs to be brought back, again and again, to be further improved.

Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

A constituent of mine from Villawood said this just recently: 'I don't want my community, especially our kids, growing up thinking gambling and sports are inseparable.' He's a father. He coaches his son's junior side on Saturday mornings. He is not an activist. He has never lobbied a politician in his life, and he came to see me about something else entirely, but he needed to tell us that. He was asking for his son to be able to watch a game of football without being taught, ad by ad, that betting is simply part of it. I myself have had loved ones who've been impacted by gambling, as I'm sure many members of this House have heard. Many members of the House have also shared stories from their own experience as well as from their constituents.

My proposition today is a simple one: Australians should be able to watch the footy, use their phones or sit with their children in the lounge room without being relentlessly targeted by gambling advertising. Betting companies should not follow people from the television screen to their phones, from the live commentary to their social feeds and into their text messages. Our children should not grow up recognising betting logos as easily as they recognise the jersey of their favourite team.

Let me put some of the numbers to what this looks like in my electorate. Fowler has long been the epicentre of gambling harm in this country. The profits flow to the wagering industry; the damage stays on our doorstep. For years, the Fairfield local government area, at the heart of my electorate, has ranked among the worst in New South Wales for gambling losses. The latest club gaming report, covering the three months from December 2025 to February 2026, shows Fairfield was the single highest losing local government area in the entire state. In 90 days, my community lost $131 million on gaming machines in clubs alone. That is more than a million dollars leaving the pockets of local families every single day. Broken down further, it is roughly $60,000 an hour, close to what a typical household in my electorate earns in an entire year—gone in 60 minutes. Across the whole of 2025, total losses on gaming machines in Fairfield exceeded $720 million. In neighbouring Liverpool, which my electorate also takes in, losses have risen 17.5 per cent in a single year—not levelling or declining but accelerating.

None of those figures include online sports betting. They do not include betting apps, racing or lotteries. When you add those, the drain on the families of Fowler is difficult to comprehend. I understand gambling machines are regulated by states, not by this parliament, but it's important to know the numbers, which tell you about the ground on which this bill lands. In multicultural, hardworking communities like mine, gambling harm is deeply entrenched. We cannot then allow online wagering platforms to exploit the same vulnerability by turning every smartphone into a portable casino. This parliament has a duty to act where it holds the power.

I'm not here to attack our clubs. In south-west Sydney, our clubs are not simply gaming rooms. They are where families hold funerals and weddings. They are where a pensioner can get a meal that they can actually afford. They are where our kids play sports, where community language groups meet and where new arrivals find their footing. Many of the people I represent are employed there, so I will not stand in this place and pretend that that is nothing. I know where my community chooses to spend their Friday nights and their weekends with their families and where they can go to eat cheap meals, but I will not pretend that a million dollars a day is the price of a community meal. Both of those things are true at once, and the people I represent are perfectly capable of holding both.

The national picture is stark. Australians lost approximately $32.2 billion on legal gambling in the 2023-24 financial year—$32.2 billion. We have the highest gambling losses per person of any country in the world. Adults in this country lose an average of more than $1,500 every year to gambling, and total losses have risen 26 per cent since 2018-19. One million Australians either experience severe gambling harm themselves or live with someone who does. Many more have lost more than they can afford. Australia has taken a lax approach for decades, and the consequences are plain. Per capita losses have grown almost every year since national reporting began in 1975.

This is not about advertising being annoying. Gambling advertising exposes Australians, including children, to a product that causes serious harm with very little corresponding social benefit. It normalises gambling from an early age. It teaches children that betting is part of sport, rather than a commercial product engineered to extract money from their families.

The Grattan Institute and public health experts have made the point that gambling products are uniquely addictive—and I think we've heard often in this House, from many members, about how those products are designed to make them very addictive. That is why we must move past the idea that this is solely a matter of individual responsibility. The traditional 'responsible gambling' framing places the entire burden on one person, while ignoring the extraordinary imbalance between a single consumer and a multibillion-dollar industry armed with data, algorithms and marketing.

We learned this lesson with tobacco. We did not ask individuals to resist cigarette advertising through willpower. We recognised the risks and we restricted the marketing.

That brings me to this bill before us, the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. I acknowledge the government's intention to begin addressing this, but this bill falls short of what is required. In 2023, the Murphy report, You win some, you lose more, gave this parliament a clear road map. That bipartisan inquiry produced 31 practical, evidence based recommendations. The bill before us adopts only three of them—just three out of 31.

First, there's the advertising cap. Three ads per hour between 6 am and 8.30 pm still allows very significant exposure, because that is peak time. Three ads every hour, all day, means children will continue to see betting woven into ordinary sports viewing, and it leaves peak evening viewing unaddressed. We should be honest about what happens when we leave loopholes. Previous restrictions during live sport did not end the saturation; companies simply found other routes to the same audience. A partial ban risks pushing advertising into direct marketing, inducements, social media, streaming and targeted messages aimed at people already in trouble. That is why the Murphy report did not recommend a cap; it recommended a comprehensive ban across broadcast and online media, phased in over three years. A phased approach gives broadcasters and sporting codes time to replace that revenue, as they have adapted before. Sports will survive without gambling ads. Families in Fowler have already waited long enough.

Second, there's the racing exemption. By excluding horse, harness and greyhound racing from the definition of a 'sporting event', a substantial share of gambling advertising remains untouched, despite racing being a major source of harm.

Third, there's the timeline on stadium and uniform branding. Allowing those arrangements until late 2031 means another five years of children seeing betting logos on the teams they love. Five more years is a childhood that will be still exposed to that.

Fourth, there's age verification. Asking platforms to take reasonable steps while prohibiting high-integrity methods such as government ID makes it harder, not easier, to keep young people out.

There is a fifth gap, and I do not believe anyone else in this debate will raise it. In communities like mine, gambling harm carries a heavy stigma. Families deal with financial ruin in silence. People fear judgement. They hide losses from their partners, their families and loved ones. They tell themselves one more bet will fix it. By the time anyone asks for help, the damage is done. Now, add this to it: in Fowler, more than three quarters of people speak a language other than English at home. Our gambling help services, our self-exclusion register and our awareness campaigns are built in English for English speakers. A Vietnamese Australian grandmother, an Assyrian Australian father or grandfather or a Khmer Australian in Cabramatta, Canley Vale or Liverpool cannot ask for help in a language nobody offers it in. Not one line in this bill addresses that, and it should.

There's one more thing we do not do: we do not count. There is not a single published figure for what my electorate loses on online wagering—not by council, not by state and not by this parliament. We meticulously count every dollar lost on machines. The online industry, we do not measure at all. We cannot properly regulate what we refuse to count.

Alongside many on the crossbench, I believe this parliament should aim at the full version of the Murphy report. First, we need a phased, comprehensive ban on gambling advertising across all platforms. Second, we need direct action on inducements—the bonus bets and the deposit matches that exist for one purpose, which is to keep people chasing losses—not merely the VIP perks that reach the few but the everyday offers that reach the many. Third, we need a strong national precommitment framework for online wagering with enforceable maximum-loss limits. Precommitment means a person decides, before they gamble, what they can afford to lose, and the system holds them to it. It must be a genuine safeguard not a box-ticking exercise where someone nominates a limit nobody could ever reach. Fourth, we need help services, self-exclusion tools and awareness campaigns delivered in languages our communities actually speak.

While machines remain a state responsibility, the Commonwealth has a clear duty to bring states together and pursue nationally consistent mandatory precommitment. Communities like Fowler cannot afford governments passing responsibility back and forth while hundreds of millions of dollars disappear.

Television networks and sporting codes can adapt. They have adapted before, and they will again. The families in my electorate have less room to adapt. The median personal income in Fowler is about $520 a week, and 46 per cent of renting households are in rental stress. This is money that was meant for groceries, for school, for shoes or for a bond. The question is simply this: can families in Fairfield, in Liverpool and across Australia afford another quarter of losses like the last one, without stronger protections in place?

I acknowledge the work of my crossbench colleagues in this House and in the Senate who have pursued these reforms with clarity and persistence. I will support every amendment that makes this bill stronger because my community cannot afford another decade of incrementalism. But I want to be honest with the people I represent about what this bill will and will not do. It will take some advertisements off some screens; it will not take millions of dollars a day out of Fairfield. They deserve to be told that plainly.

I want to come back to that father in Villawood. He was not asking for much, only that his son can watch a game without being sold something every time he does. That is not a lot to ask. This parliament should be able to deliver it.

I want to say this message: if gambling is affecting you or someone that you love, please call the National Gambling Helpline. The number is 1800858858. It's free. It's confidential. It's 24 hours a day with interpreters available.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) | Link to this | Hansard source

I've got to start today by saying that I like a punt. I like a bet. I like having a beer with my mates and having a bet. I also have a stake in a couple of horses, and I love horseracing and the horseracing industry. I think there is no better sight in Australia than the Grand Annual steeplechase being run with 14,000 people there at the venue. It's the largest crowd you will get outside of a metropolitan race meeting like the Melbourne Cup or the carnival in Sydney, with them all standing up on the hill watching horses do what they've done for over 100 years. As a matter of fact, the Grand Annual steeplechase will be run for the 150th time next year. But it's not just events like that; it's the Dunkeld Cup, where you get young people who've finished school all going there—and, once again, you'll get 8,000 to 10,000 people in a beautiful setting, with Mount Sturgeon as the backdrop, just having fun and enjoying themselves. If you go to Coleraine and to Casterton, these are wonderful racetracks which have wonderful race meetings. You can go to Hamilton and watch the horse trials, and you get a sense of the people that are employed in the horseracing industry. You see the jockeys, the trainers and everyone else—the strappers who love and care for the horses like there is no tomorrow. It just gives you a sense of people getting up early, working hard and doing something that they love.

I can go right around my electorate and see things like this. It can be the Warrnambool dogs and the wonderful meeting they have during the Warrnambool Racing Carnival. You can go to Hamilton for the harness racing; they do a fantastic job. People come from south-west Victoria and South Australia, bringing their horses to participate. Terang is another great meeting. Mortlake is another great meeting. I'm going to leave parts of my electorate out. Ararat has both harness and great thoroughbred racing; people come and participate in the Ararat Cup, which is fantastic. It is the same in Colac. Right throughout my electorate, this is an industry which is creating jobs and giving passion to people who are involved in it in a way that's very hard to capture.

We have to make sure that the ability for people to race is always there, because it's something we've always done. If you try and take it away, it won't work. Prohibition won't work. You have to, like you have to do with all things when you are being responsible in government, make sure you get the balance right. For me, with these gambling reforms, getting the balance right is absolutely crucial. We don't want to impact and hurt an industry which provides thousands and thousands of jobs in regional and rural Australia and in urban Australia while we deal with something we need to deal with—that is, gambling advertising and the change which is occurring in society, in the way that gambling advertising is working, so that we protect children and protect people who are very vulnerable to being exploited.

Getting the balance right is exactly what the government and the opposition want to do. We want to make sure that there are sensible changes which address keeping harmful advertising away from children, and we want to make sure that, for those who have identified themselves as having a problem when it comes to gambling, we do what we can in the best way that we can to protect them—all while not impacting on those who like to have a bet or on those industries which provide such enjoyment and, in particular, much-needed employment which generates incomes and puts roofs on homes, over people's heads, so they can bring up families and participate in the community. That is what we need to see in this bill.

I think we're all in agreement—those on the government side and us on the opposition side—that the first attempt made by the government probably doesn't get the balance right. There have been some very sensible suggestions as to how we can change it and get the balance right. When we're dealing with issues like this, I think this place works well when there is a lot of passion on both sides. And I understand why there is a lot of passion on both sides.

I had a family member who got in a lot of trouble because of their gambling. If it wasn't for a brother stepping in, helping and supporting them, they would have got in very serious trouble. My uncle was able to help my other uncle to basically straighten himself up and to stop the harm that he was causing himself. It is critically important that we provide avenues and mechanisms to help those who need help, and that is what we're seeking to do.

We're trying—and should be trying—to do it in a way where we don't take away the individual right of an adult to spend their money how they see fit. If they get enjoyment from putting $25 on a horse or $25 on a pacer or $25 on a greyhound, they should be able to do it. And, if they're offered money back for running second or third, they should be able to take that up. I like the fact that, when I have a bet and the horse finishes second, I get my money back. I can't see what's wrong with that. That's a good offer which I'm happy to take up. I will say here quite publicly that sometimes you win; sometimes you lose. The way it works, more often than not, is that the bookies who set the odds are trying to make sure they're the ones that win. But sometimes they'll offer you odds more in your favour or offer you money back for running second and third. That ultimately should be a choice that you have.

As a House and as a Senate, as a parliament as a whole, if we sit down and work this through, I think we can get the balance right. What I see as getting the balance right is making sure that we address the issue when it comes to children and their exposure to gambling advertising—and we should do that in the best way we possibly can—and that we make sure we look after those who are vulnerable, those who can be exploited; we have to make sure we're dealing with them. But we also have to make sure that we're not forcing gambling offshore nor forcing gambling towards organised crime. That will help no-one. We've got to make sure that we continue to have legalised gambling happening here in a way which benefits the industries which provide really important jobs and really important occasions for society. In particular, if we get this balance right, it will mean in my electorate that Terang, Hamilton, Coleraine and Casterton will still be able to offer race meetings, where the community come together and enjoy themselves.

I'll end on this point: if you want to see a community enjoy itself, then, for the 150th running of the Grand Annual Steeplechase in Warrnambool next year, make sure you get down and participate and see the spectacle for what it is. You can come, you can have a bet and you can have a drink. You can come and you don't have to have a bet. You don't have to have a drink. It's your choice. But you can come and watch an event which brings the community together, brings thorough enjoyment to everyone who's involved, whether it be the trainers, whether it be the jockeys, whether it be the strappers, whether it be everyone else involved in the industry or the community, who like nothing better than coming together and enjoying themselves and having fun.

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise to speak to the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill and I do so as the former chair of the committee that put forward what is known as the Murphy report. I'm glad to be speaking last because I've listened to many of the contributions to this bill and it would seem that there is a broad misunderstanding of the role of the committee. The role of the committee wasn't to ban gambling. It wasn't to restrict choice for punters to go out and do just that—have a punt. It wasn't to cripple the gambling industry that creates over 30,000 jobs a year. It was to stop the predatory practices by online wagering services that cause so much devastation throughout our communities, and that seems to be forgotten. The predatory practices by the online wagering services have gone on for so long. If I go through the history, we're going back to late 2022 when this committee started and the report wasn't published until mid 2023. The late Peta Murphy, who was not only a highly intelligent lawyer but a fierce parliamentarian, was extremely passionate about this committee.

During the inquiry, we heard from two different groups: (1) those who are affected; (2) those who inflict it. Witness after witness came into this place and spoke of loved ones, family members, who were targeted by predatory online wagering services. Some of them survived; some of them didn't. We heard evidence from a family member who had to cut down her brother from a tree because he was targeted even though he had tried and tried and tried to get away from these practices of online wagering services. There are other people whose family members didn't survive because of the debt and the shame of what they went through.

Now, I accept we can't protect everybody from themselves but what we can do as a parliament is stop this type of behaviour from those who inflict it. Those online wagering services that gave evidence, in my view, simply diminished or demeaned the situation, placated the committee by saying, 'We will work with you,' but have since done nothing but lobby both sides to weaken the legislation, and they continue to do that today.

Everyone in this place is on a committee. I ask: What's the point? What is the point of being on a committee that delivers 31 recommendations unanimously—no dissenting reports—to the government to say, 'This is what we have considered.'? This comes from evidence from people who have been affected. This comes from the intelligence of every single member sitting in this place on that committee, and we say, 'This is what should be implemented'—only to be discarded: 'Well, we're not going to take that into account.' What's the point? What's the point of having elected representatives come into this place and sit on committees and make recommendations? Those recommendations don't just come from us; they come from our constituents. Why are we here?

Labor sit over there and laud Peta Murphy—and so they should. She was a wonderful woman and a great parliamentarian. Well, step up and make it not the Murphy recommendations or the Murphy report but the Murphy reform. Implement those 31 recommendations. That won't make gambling fall off the face of the earth; that's rubbish. It's just like what they said when they cut advertising for smoking. Smoking rates have never been higher—you can thank the Labor government for that; that's a different issue. The racing industry won't be affected. The gambling industry won't be affected. Those working won't be affected. Gambling won't go overseas. Nothing will change except we will be providing those barriers for predatory practices on vulnerable people.

Step up, Labor. Step up and implement those recommendations, because Peta worked hard. We all worked hard on those recommendations, and we listened. They're not just stories; these are people. These are real people who will suffer for the rest of their lives because of those practices.

This bill, the main bill, does nothing. In fact, it waters down the 2018 position of the coalition. There is no point to the main bill. It won't protect anyone. It won't stop the inducements and the predatory practices that we have seen. I don't care if you gamble—I gamble—but gambling harm does not discriminate.

As a lawyer, I acted for a young man who was another lawyer—highly intelligent—who stole a great deal of money from his employer, from the trust account. He knew, eventually, once that trust account was audited, he would be found out. He was smart, but he couldn't stop. He was being targeted by these online wagering services, given inducements and money. We can't just say, 'Well, that's okay; it's up to an individual.' We have a responsibility. The responsibility lies in those 31 recommendations. They should be implemented at least for the memory of Peta Murphy.

Anika Wells (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sport) | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank members for their contributions to the debate on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 and the National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026. The government will not support the member for Ryan's or the member for Curtin's second reading amendments, as they do not deal with the substance of these bills.

Thank you to my colleagues in the Labor caucus who have engaged sincerely and constructively on this important issue. I also thank the Labor rank-and-file members who built the Australian Labor Party platform and now rightfully recognise that reducing gambling harm is a priority of our party. Great things happen when lots of small things are brought together.

I also acknowledge the work of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee in considering these bills, and the members of the community—particularly the harm reduction advocates and the survivors of gambling harm—who gave evidence and gave much of themselves in coming to this place for the recent inquiry. As we have heard through the debate, for many Australians, gambling harm is not an abstract policy problem eased by parliamentary debate. It is a parent worried about what their child is absorbing by watching sport. It is a friend trying to take that courageous first step away from secret gambling. It is a family dealing with the consequences when gambling stops being entertainment and starts becoming harm.

What we have before us is a significant and meaningful suite of reforms that will do more than any other Australian government has to protect children, families and communities from gambling harms. These reforms will minimise children's exposure to wagering advertising while reducing the overall saturation of advertising on television and radio and the targeting and saturation of advertising online. The bill also contains provisions to disrupt illegal gambling operators and crack down on online lottery products. The bill also strengthens BetStop, the national self-exclusion register, so it can better support Australians at risk of gambling harm. The cost recovery levy bill enables the costs of a comprehensive national awareness campaign to be recovered from industry, ensuring more Australians know about BetStop and can access it when they need to with no cost to taxpayers.

Together, these reforms represent the strongest action to date on online gambling harm. The measures will commence from 1 January 2027, and we have consulted broadly with stakeholders to ensure effective implementation. The Australian Communications and Media Authority will be empowered with a range of strong and proportionate penalties to deter noncompliance with the new rules and act faster against illegal operators. ACMA has also been provided with additional resourcing to strengthen BetStop compliance and enforcement and to support more awareness raising and system improvements.

It is clear from this debate that the parliament has strong views on the prevalence of gambling advertising, along with the use of inducements by wagering service providers to target vulnerable customers. I remain committed to working constructively across the parliament on sensible additions to strengthen this bill further. We want to see it passed, so see you next week for amendments.

Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

In accordance with the resolution agreed on 12 August 2026, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.