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

The reason we need a national regulator and the reason the Murphy report and every single expert on this matter has recommended it is that, without a national regulator, there will be no enforcement of any national law. There will be no enforcement of the rules that tonight this chamber wants to implement that will actually hit the gambling companies where it matters. Without a national regulator, all of the gambling companies register themselves—we know this—through the NT commission, which, by the way, doesn't even have one full-time staff member. It doesn't have one full-time staff member. They are set up as a protection racket.

It is not a coincidence or a sheer accident that every gambling company in the country is registered through the NT. It is not an accident that they do that. They do it because they get a free ride. They do it because they are not held to a high standard. They do it because not one penalty has ever been handed out by the commission. They have no full-time staff. They have no power. They don't intend to use any power. They're used as a protection racket for a predatory industry that continues to profit off harm.

Tonight, we've seen arguments from the government to introduce new laws. Yet there are no consequences for the companies—nothing. There's a reason this national regulator was recommended. Unless you have a cop on the beat, a watchdog with teeth, it won't matter how many times the gambling industry promises not to do it again; they will. We've seen it over and over and over again. The gambling industry flaunts the rules, breaks the rules, and they don't care because the federal government has no power to deregister them. The only thing that matters to these gambling companies is their licence.

We hear from the government that these are the strongest laws possible ever created. Yet the one thing those in the gambling industry need is their licence, and the federal government is saying: 'We don't want anything to do with that. It's not our problem.' It's like having a serial offender speed, drink drive, crash, hit a pedestrian and you can fine them, but you can't put them in jail. The fines are useless anyway. A couple of million bucks for companies that spend $600 million a year on the advertising of their dangerous product—it is the cost of doing business.

So unless you have the ability to strip these companies of their licence and shut them down, they will do whatever the hell they want. That is why we need a national regulator. I urge my colleagues. I didn't come up with this idea. The experts did. The Murphy report recommended it. It said it that it doesn't matter what rules you put in place, if you don't have a national regulator, none of them will work.