MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Mr WILKIE (Clark) (15:43): All I can say is, 'Good grief.' The Australian community was expecting us to come in here and have an intelligent debate about the issue of banning gambling advertising. All we have heard so far from the members of the government is a whole lot of platitudes and back-slapping about the wonderful job they are doing. There has been no mention so far of the fact that the Murphy inquiry, more than two years ago, made a flagship recommendation that there be a three-year phase out of gambling advertising for a range of reasons.

For a start, Australians are sick of it. They're sick to death that, every time they turn on their iPad or their phone or their telly or whatever, they are bombarded with gambling advertising. It's annoying, and it's ruining their enjoyment of sport.

But much more important than the annoyance of gambling advertising is the way that it is normalising gambling in the community at all age levels. It is at a point where I would say it is more than normalising; it's grooming children to become future gamblers. It's no wonder that recent research by the Australia Institute found that, in one year, almost one million teenagers between the ages of 12 and 19 had gambled.

How can we accept that as a country and as a community—almost a million teenagers gambling in any one year? This is an intensely human issue, because as you increase the prevalence of gambling, and normalise it, you increase the prevalence of gambling addiction. And gambling addiction means many tens of thousands of people losing money they can't afford to lose.

It means losing relationships, losing families, losing jobs, and losing health and mental health. In the worst case, it means people self-harming. I'm very pleased the member for Calare has raised the issue of suicide.

We push it aside because it is unpalatable to talk about. But we know, from research out of the UK, that something like five per cent of people who have a gambling addiction attempt suicide in any one year. We know for a fact that, in Australia, more than 400 people suicide in any one year as a direct result of gambling addiction.

In other words, since the Murphy report was released more than two years ago, nearly 1,000 Australians have taken their life because of their gambling addiction. Yet we come in here and pat each other on the back and say, 'What a grand job we're doing.' We're not doing a grand job at all. And why is this?

Why is it so hard for a government to implement the bipartisan, or tripartisan, unanimous recommendations of the Murphy report from more than two years ago? I will tell you why. It is because the government and the opposition are scared stiff of the gambling companies.

The government and the opposition are scared stiff of the media companies. The government and the opposition are scared stiff of the major sporting codes, who profit from the bets that are laid on their games—the bets from the NRL and from the AFL. That's what this comes down to: gutless policymakers who are not prepared to stand up to these thugs and put the public interest ahead of the corporate interests of the gambling companies, the media companies and the major sporting codes.

That's what it comes down to. Anyone listening to this debate from out in the community won't just be disappointed; they'll be distressed. There is every chance they know someone with a gambling addiction.

It could be their mum, their dad, their brother, their sister, their son, their daughter, their friend or their work colleague. And they look at us and they hear our debates and they think, 'How can these politicians be so selfish, so clueless and so weak?' That's what it comes down to. I've been banging away on this for a long time, and a lot of Australians have been banging away on this for a long time, and we will keep taking this fight up to the government and to the alternative government until they grow a backbone and they stare down these powerful vested interests.

Until they do, people will keep suffering and people will keep dying, and the public will have had a gutful of the political class.