David Pocock (ACT, Independent) | Hansard source

Today, colleagues, is a sombre day. It is a tragic reminder of why we're seeing declining trust in politicians, in politics and in governments. I only started calling myself Australian in 2002, after my family moved here, and in that time I've never seen a prime minister with such a mandate to do something. This is a prime minister who has a unanimously backed parliamentary inquiry that looks at the harms of gambling in this country and has 31 recommendations to turn things around, with not a dissenting report nor additional comment. This is a prime minister who has the support of his party, parliamentary colleagues, rank-and-file Labor members and branches. This is a prime minister who has 80 per cent of Australians saying: 'Ban the damn ads. We're sick and tired of seeing these ads on TV, online and on social media. Get rid of them. We see the impact it's having on our kids. We see that it's setting them up for failure in the country that is the biggest loser per capita in the world.'

Yet we have a prime minister who, despite all that, has not just capitulated to vested interests but over the last three years has actively engaged in watering down reform, providing an off-ramp from the Murphy report, delaying the response and giving us talking points straight from the industry that no experts can actually point to being based in any sort of fact. Now there is this bill, the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026, which is a betrayal of an incredible legacy.

This is a missed opportunity to change the country for generations of Australians, and this is a victory of vested interests over the community, over the people who we are meant to be in here to serve. Today, those vested interests have won. They managed to get to the Prime Minister, and it seems like he has single-handedly stopped the Labor Party doing what 80 per cent of Australians wanted them to do and assumed they would do. The vested interests may have won this battle, but they will not win the war against the Australian people, who want our children protected and a predatory industry put in its place. Fellow independent members, members of the crossbench and senators from the major parties who disagree with this legislation will all keep pushing hard to actually implement the Murphy report in line with what communities want and with what the parliament said was necessary.

I don't know about colleagues in here, but I continue to read the most tragic emails from constituents and from Australians further abroad, emailing from Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne with their personal stories of the impacts of gambling in a country where it's become so normalised—the impacts of inducements, the impacts on their family of losing a brother, son, grandson to gambling addiction and suicide. I've heard from Canberrans who are furious that their elected representative in the south of Canberra has not mentioned gambling reform a single time in the parliament since the Murphy report—not one single time. I assume people are emailing the member for Bean. They are certainly emailing me about this. He couldn't muster a single mention of gambling reform over the last three years.

We've got the independent candidate for Bean Jessie Price out there engaging with the community. Last week, I tabled a petition of over 700 Canberrans who've had a gut full and want the Labor government to act on this. I thought I would just echo some of the concerns I've heard from Canberrans about this. One says: 'This is the first time I've ever written to any member of parliament. The very communities that I live in are appalled at the voracious predatory industry of gambling. It's a social cancer. Its impacts on people's lives in general in our society are so detrimental.' Another one says, 'What or who is stopping the ALP from doing what Australians want?' There are more emails from people saying that they were faithful Labor voters but no longer. They feel betrayed. They feel like they've been sold out to vested interests.

I've seen, and we've obviously heard, Labor members out there trying to defend this weak package, which basically doesn't implement a single recommendation of the Murphy report in full, and vastly overselling what the bill actually does. So let's quickly look at the facts. You already can't have ads in live sport between 5 am and 8.30. This bill doesn't change that. It just preserves the status quo. You're lifting the code and putting it in law. That's not something to be applauded. You already can't play betting ads during G rated programs. Why should we applaud you for doing something that already cannot be done on television. And it's already the rule that inducements can't be sent to people who are struggling. It's just never enforced because we have this industry that is regulated out of the NT, and the regulator there is basically functionally useless—asleep at the wheel. We heard evidence in the Senate inquiry that the regulator in the NT that regulates all of these big multinational gambling companies has no full-time staff. We've since heard that, after the allegations were aired at the Senate inquiry, they still have not contacted a single gambling company to say, 'Hey, were you offering cocaine as an inducement? Were you hooking up drugs? Were you offering sex workers?' and that continues. The Anthony Albanese Labor government is very happy for the NT regulator to continue to have a very light touch, and that is exactly why the Murphy report called for a national regulator.

Offshore betting providers are already banned. Illegal offshore gambling is illegal. It's in the name. That's not something that you're delivering with this. There is so much spin, and it's devastating to hear Labor members trying to sell this reform to Australians.

My team has been working tirelessly on amendments, and I really thank the drafters. I know there's a huge amount of pressure on you at the moment. I'll be moving a host of amendments to try and strengthen this bill and make it a true reflection of what the Murphy report called for. Some I would personally find hard to vote against, but that's in senators' hands. One is an amendment that would ensure that proceeds of crime have to be returned by betting companies. We heard time and time again in the inquiry—and this was canvassed in the Murphy review—that where people have stolen money and bet it, gambling companies have no obligation to actually return that money to the people it was stolen from. That's surely something the Senate could fix.

I'll be moving a full gambling ad ban, as recommended by the Murphy report. Peta Murphy was clear. Partial bans on gambling advertising do not work, and I'm going to take her and the committee at their word. Rather than these weak cooling-off periods that we've heard about from the Prime Minister and Labor members, I'm proposing a full ban on inducements, as recommended by Peta Murphy. She stood up and said, 'This is the most urgent part of all of this reform. We should ban inducements today.' That was three years ago. They should be banned immediately, and, three years on, we're still seeing inducements. Now, we're essentially legitimising inducements with this legislation, basically just saying, 'Inducements are fine, as long as they're not within these certain bounds or scenarios.' That's really hard to stomach.

I'm proposing to replace the unworkable opt-out mechanism with an opt-in one. No-one is saying, despite what the PM might say, that we want to ban gambling in this country. That's ridiculous. We just want to ban these ads. If you are over 18 and you enjoy the ads, then you can opt in. It shouldn't be on everyone else to have to go through some convoluted process and then maybe, in 12 months, hopefully, we have this opt-out register that's modelled on the Do Not Call register. I don't know how many Australians are signed up for that and still get pestered by telemarketers and all sorts of people calling their mobile phones.