Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Well, another day, another attempt by this government to keep the public in the dark and keep their policies, their policy deliberations and their thoughts secret. This is just an appalling abuse of the cabinet-in-confidence process. Let's remember that this is a government who promised to implement reforms to gambling advertising, because we know, and the government have accepted themselves and the parliament across the board understands, that the advertising of a harmful product like gambling is dangerous and needs proper regulation. The government promised to move on this. They promised to move on this years ago. They promised to do something about this in the last term. Then, of course, someone—I don't know if it came from the Prime Minister or some of the government's sports mates or Peter V'landys or the former communications minister—made the decision that, rather than delivering on the promise to save Australian lives, to stop this harm that is being done to Australian families, they would bury any evidence that they were even thinking about it.

Senator Pocock's request is a reasonable one, asking for a list of documents, asking for some speaking notes, asking for the government to be upfront with the Australian people and this parliament about what is going on in relation to gambling advertising reform. We have every right to ask these questions. The government made a promise that they have broken, and now we have no idea what is going to happen. This could all be dealt with if the government just did what they said they would do. This chamber stands ready to pass gambling reform to ban advertising that is destroying families and making our kids addicted. We could do this tomorrow if we wanted to—if the government wanted to. But the government seem to have a pattern of behaviour: every time there is a topic or an issue that has become uncomfortable for them, that they don't really want to be upfront about, that donors aren't happy about or lobbyists aren't happy about—someone has gotten in the Prime Minister's ear—every time there is an issue that has become awkward for the government, they shut the doors, turn the lights off and hide all the documents under the couch. It's not good enough.

Remember when the Albanese government came to power and poked fun at the secret ministries of the Morrison days? They promised to be better when it came to transparency and government accountability, and yet it seems every single day the government are finding more and more excuses, weak excuses, to keep information out of public view and out of the hands of the Australian parliament.

We have a Westminster system in this country, and it serves us pretty well, but one of the main roles of this chamber is to hold government to account so that we don't have a prime minister drunk with power, so we don't have corruption, so we don't have communities promised one thing and delivered something else—or not delivered anything at all.

Gambling is destroying the lives of Australian families. We need to stop allowing the gambling companies to advertise this insidious, dangerous product. We need to ban it now. The government could do it. They could work with us to get it done.

Question agreed to.