David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today marks 1,000 days since the landmark Murphy report was tabled in the parliament. I want to start with a personal reflection. Over the last six months to a year, I've been at a number of events, weddings and birthdays where young men have asked if they could have a quick chat to me in private and they've opened up about their struggle with gambling—their losses, the shame that they have felt with an addiction that they don't feel like they can talk about publicly, what that's doing to them and then how damn hard it is to actually deal with it when they're getting bombarded with ads. I come away with sadness and anger—anger that we as a parliament have failed on this. The Albanese government has failed Australians when it comes to banning gambling advertising. A thousand days ago, you were given the blueprint—a multipartisan-backed report saying, 'This is what we need to do.' Yet we have a prime minister who won't even meet with young women like Kate, who found her brother's body after he committed suicide. He won't meet with her. He's doing the bidding of Peter V'landys and the gambling industry. It is shameful. It is totally shameful. All the things we were warned about in the Murphy report are now happening. The gambling companies are branching out. They're targeting women, and it's thanks to the research at Deakin University that we now know that they are targeting young Australian women, saying: 'This is about empowerment. You can gamble too. Gambling's normal. We should all be able to gamble.' This has to end. The Prime Minister needs to actually stand up and act.