Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate and thank Senator Di Natale for bringing this issue before the Senate. I share his concern about the extent to which the broadcast of live odds for sports betting is becoming an insidious practice. It drives me demented during sports broadcasts, especially during free-to-air television programs on a Sunday afternoon when I am trying to watch my footy team. I totally agree that it is a practice which intrudes on the fun that comes from sitting down with your family and supporting your local team. It certainly takes the notion of betting on two flies on a wall to a whole new level. That is what wagering used to be about, but now it has become a multibillion-dollar global industry that many people cannot resist. It is irritating in the extreme to be constantly bombarded by ads which actively encourage people to bet online or to use their smartphones. As such, it is a practice that I absolutely discourage.

It also worries me that the broadcast of live odds for sports betting is a honey pot for those who want to exploit athletes or animals or encourage match fixing. Seriously, what does it mean when someone can get live odds on whether the third conversion attempt will be unsuccessful? It is a big temptation for criminals and creates a risk that sporting codes have to get their heads around. Some codes have been dealing with these things for years—fighters taking a dive in the third round, soccer players feigning injury or horses being drenched, as we saw last week in Tamworth. We all recognise how easy it is to exploit such things through dodgy real-time gambling options.

Senator's Di Natale's motion seeks to ban the broadcast of all live odds for sports betting, ban gambling advertising before 9 pm and ban promotion of gambling by commentators during sports broadcasts. But, unfortunately, Senator Di Natale's motion is trying to shut the gate after the horse has bolted, if you will pardon my pun. Parliament and all levels of government have expressed concern to the broadcasting industry, which has finally acknowledged the level of community concern about the promotion of live odds during sporting broadcasts and has agreed to amend their codes of practice.

I think the broadcasting industry has been shamed into action to claw back the leeway it has given to sports betting agencies and to adopt what we have seen in America and some European countries for years. The industry now wants to demonstrate that it can respond through voluntary codes of practice and has agreed that there will be no promotion of live odds by commentators at any time during sports broadcasts

There will be no advertising of live odds during play, with clearly identified ads restricted to scheduled breaks in play such as half-time. Let us see if this is enough to curb the blatant behaviour of sports-betting promoters.

While the broadcasting industry has agreed to this action, I think that the role of government is to acknowledge how gambling is pervasive in our society and to try to address the issue of problem gambling in a more holistic way. In the Monthly magazine, back in 2011, Jonathan Horn wrote:

Neil Evans is the public face of Centrebet. His organisation will accept a bet on pretty much anything. Their federal-election markets garner such coverage that Evans is occasionally referred to as a ‘political analyst’. Centrebet has released markets on the national unemployment rate, the colour of Queen Elizabeth’s hat at her grandson’s wedding, and the World Sauna Championships held in Finland. On the flip side, their plan to offer betting on the permutations of the Australian stock exchange was recently rejected by ASIC.

Thank heavens for that, I would suggest. The article continues:

In March 2008, with James Packer’s Crown Limited bankrolling it, Betfair won a unanimous High Court decision which deemed it unconstitutional to prohibit bookmakers from advertising in one state and operating in another. Suddenly there were no state boundaries, the shackles were off and the land grab was on. “It was the most important thing to happen in 150 years of bookmaking in Australia,” says Betstar’s Alan Eskander. “It kick-started the life-cycle of our industry.”

…   …   …

Their market was voracious, if untapped. Australians are the most fearless gamblers in the world. A recent report in the Economist indicated that, on average, every adult Australian loses just under $1300 per year. As a nation, we drop $22 billion per year on the punt, nearly five times what we spend on foreign aid. “Australians love it,” Eskander says. “It’s how we’ve been brought up, it’s part of our culture, part of our folklore.”

In many respects, of course, Mr Eskander is right. We love two-up. Generations of Australians bet on the Melbourne Cup. We take lottery tickets. But what has happened since 2011 has taken betting to a whole new level.

So what are our responsibilities as legislators? Do we seek to legislate for good behaviour? Do we seek to regulate the industry? Do we seek to ban gambling, driving it underground and back to the good old days of SP bookmakers? Technology will beat us every time if that is the approach we take. We are not a nanny state. We expect people to be responsible for their actions and we acknowledge too that, for people who develop a gambling addiction, we need to take action and provide support. But the sporting bodies, the broadcasters and the gambling industry have an important role to play to ensure our sports do not become swamped with gambling messages, to the point where sport and gambling are seen as one and the same. Just like Senator Di Natale, I have had many, many people contact me about that blurred boundary. No-one wants the conflation of gambling and sport—not the sports, not the Australian government and certainly not the community, which is making it clear that enough is enough. The government is acting to ensure that something is done about it, working with the broadcasters on amendments to the broadcasting industry coregulatory codes of practice, which are enforced by ACMA.

On 22 June last year, Minister Conroy announced that the government and the commercial and subscription broadcasters had reached an agreement on reducing and controlling the promotion of live betting odds during sports broadcasts, and state and territory governments had committed to looking at the steps they can take to limit promotion of live odds at sporting grounds, such as on scoreboards or by ground announcers. The amendments to the code which have been developed between industry and the government will prohibit commentators from promoting any live odds at all during a broadcast and 30 minutes before or after the match begins and ends. They will restrict the promotion of odds to scheduled breaks in play such as half-time during the rugby or quarter-time in the AFL or at the end of a set of tennis. That means there will be no promotion of live odds when the match is actually in play. The amendments will also provide that the promotion of odds during a scheduled break in the play must be by a clearly distinguishable gambling representative. The proposed amendments to the code were released for public consultation on Monday, 22 April, for a four-week period, so I encourage anyone who has concerns about this to visit the websites of Free TV and ASTRA to have their voices heard, loud and clear.

Since the agreement between the government and the broadcasters last year establishing these principles, broadcasters have largely abided by them, even though the amended codes are not yet in place. That was until, as Senator Di Natale rightly tells us, the Tom Waterhouse advertisements and activities hit our screens with a vengeance this year. When Mr Waterhouse appeared in the first round of the NRL on Nine, I was dumbfounded. This was a step too far, in my view and, from the reaction everywhere else, in the view of most Australians. In his first-round NRL appearance, Waterhouse appeared to be a part of the commentary team and sat on the panel with the other commentators, providing comments on the game itself as well as promoting live odds, and he did not have any visible signs that he was representing Tomwaterhouse.com.

In March the NRL admitted to the Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform that 'the lines were a little blurred' in that incident. A little blurred indeed! The NRL's General Manager of Strategic Projects, Mr Mattiske, conceded that it was hard to tell whether or not Mr Waterhouse was part of the commentary team, and he said changes had now been made. He said:

… it is plain that, in the first round of the competition, the lines were a little blurred.

But:

… now… there is a very clear distinction between the commentary team and the promotion of sports betting.

Another witness to the inquiry said that Mr Waterhouse:

… now appears alone. There is a Tom Waterhouse microphone and big logo on the screen saying that he's an online bookmaker. … There is a significant change in the format of that.

I wonder if that is going to be enough. The broadcasting industry and the sports industry are very keen to try to take further action to amend the code and to try to use a mandatory process to do that. The government, I think, are taking this view: to give credit where it is due, where the industry has said it is going to take action we will wait and see how these codes work before we consider to rush to legislate. There could be a role, too, for state and territory governments to place similar restrictions on other forms of advertising within their jurisdictions—as I said before, such as the promotion of live odds at the sporting grounds or during sporting events.

But it should be even easier for the public to find information about that code of conduct. For example, it could be advertised on TV channels during the sports broadcasts and, while it is important that the public has an adequate opportunity to comment on the code, it is also important to make sure that those comments, and any expressions of concern, are not simply recorded but are actually addressed—that action is taken or change is made to the code to address community concern.

I go back to Senator Di Natale's question: can a 12-year-old distinguish between a sports commentator and Tom Waterhouse talking about the game? I do not think that many young kids can, and I would like to see that—as Mr Mattiske said, in answer to a question asked of him by Senator Xenophon about whether there was a conflict of interest in brokering a deal with Mr Waterhouse while at the same time trying to regulate sports gambling—'The integrity of the competition is our utmost priority. We would not allow any arrangements to threaten that.'

In fact, what we do know is that that activity by Mr Waterhouse would have been a breach of two of the restrictions in the code once it was implemented: the restriction on commentators and their guests promoting live odds; and the requirement for live odds to be promoted, when permitted, by a clearly distinguishable representative of a gambling organisation. As Minister Conroy said to the industry in 2011: lift your game; we are going to take action on this. And the broadcasters and the sports, to their credit, have responded to that. So what we want to see—and these are the changes to the codes that have been proposed and are being consulted on right now—is that commentators spruiking live odds, or gambling advertisements displaying the odds on television of who will kick the next goal after the last one was scored, cannot creep back into sports broadcasts.

It is an insidious change to the way in which we all think about community sports in Australia. It is an insidious and insulting change. It is one that I think threatens the way in which Australians react to their community sports and it is something that the government is very keen to ensure is eliminated. But we do not support the notion of actually legislating this ban.

Senator Di Natale's proposal, which goes to the issue of banning the advertising of sports betting services on television and radio during children's viewing hours before 9 pm, does actually go to prime-time television sports broadcasts, and therefore is something that we cannot support. We will watch and wait and ensure that the voluntary codes that are being proposed and entered into by the broadcasting industry are actually activated and that they are effective.