MOTIONS
Dr RYAN (Kooyong) (12:01): I seek leave to move the following motion: That this House: (1) notes that: (a) gambling advertising causes significant health and financial harm to more than 3 million Australians every year; (b) the Government's exposure draft of the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 was released for limited consultation only, including broadcasters and sporting codes with no public consultation process open to the millions of Australians who are directly affected by gambling harm and with the consultation period too brief to allow meaningful scrutiny; and (c) open letters from the crossbench as well as the Liberal Party, including from former Prime Minister the Hon John Howard OM AC and former Premier of Victoria the Hon Jeff Kennett AC, have recognised that the Government's proposed reforms to regulation of gambling do not go far enough; (2) recognises the importance of transparent consultation on significant legislative reforms; and (3) calls on the Government to undertake public consultation so that Australians affected by the legislation can engage with genuine co-design on the bill before its introduction.
Leave not granted. Dr RYAN: I move: That so much of standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Kooyong from moving the following motion: That this House: (1) notes that: (a) gambling advertising causes significant health and financial harm to more than 3 million Australians every year; (b) the Government's exposure draft of the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 was released for limited consultation only, including broadcasters and sporting codes with no public consultation process open to the millions of Australians who are directly affected by gambling harm and with the consultation period too brief to allow meaningful scrutiny; and (c) open letters from the crossbench as well as the Liberal Party, including from former Prime Minister the Hon John Howard OM AC and former Premier of Victoria the Hon Jeff Kennett AC, have recognised that the Government's proposed reforms to regulation of gambling do not go far enough; (2) recognises the importance of transparent consultation on significant legislative reforms; and (3) calls on the Government to undertake public consultation so that Australians affected by the legislation can engage with genuine co-design on the bill before its introduction.
We urgently need to suspend standing orders to debate this motion. We need to do that because, while the Australian public has been forced to accept harmful and inexcusable delays to gambling reform, it should not also be expected to accept opaque law making and inadequate public and expert consultation. Consultation is not an obstacle to good lawmaking; it's how good lawmaking happens.
If the government is confident in its policy choices on gambling advertising, it should have nothing to fear from consultation with the experts and with the public. If this legislation strikes the right balance and will generally protect Australians from gambling harm while providing industry certainty for the gambling industry, for broadcasters and for sporting codes, the government should be making that case publicly and transparently, but, if there are flaws, unintended consequences or missed opportunities, we should work to identify them before the bill is introduced, not after it's passed this parliament.
This motion seeks to improve much-needed reform to gambling advertising. It seeks to ensure that Australians who live with gambling harm; families who have lost loved ones; community organisations who are working on the front line; and researchers, advocates and ordinary citizens have the same opportunity to engage with this legislation as the broadcasters and the sporting codes have had.
More than three years ago, something very rare happened in this place. There was multipartisan, cross-party, unequivocal consensus. That happened when a federal parliamentary inquiry into online gambling harm reached consensus on all 31 of the recommendations in the You win some, you lose more Murphy report.
They were 31 recommendations agreed to by all members of the committee, across party lines. I don't have to remind the House—but I will—that that inquiry was led by the late Peta Murphy, a Labor MP who devoted enormous energy and some of her final months to this important cause. With one voice, the committee told this parliament that the harms caused by gambling were real, that the evidence was clear and that the time to act was now.
That was more than a thousand days ago—a thousand days of harm, a thousand days of inaction. After years of campaigning from the crossbench and the opposition, the Prime Minister decided to take out the trash on the government's gambling reform right before the Easter long weekend as journalists were heading out the door and as the public headed out on a well-earned break.
That was a strategic play from the Prime Minister. He wanted to minimise media coverage and he wanted to avoid public scrutiny and accountability. Then, weeks later, while all the journalists and every MP in Canberra were cordoned off in the budget lock up, the Prime Minister tabled his government's formal response to the Murphy review.
He did that after question time, buried in 18 other government responses to overdue reports. That government response is nine pages long—nine pages in response to a 197-page review. That's 100 days for every page of the government's inadequate response.
I was glad to see an exposure draft of this legislation released before it came to parliament. Exposure drafts are important. They allow scrutiny.
They allow experts and affected communities to identify problems with legislation before a bill gets locked in. But the government didn't open up that exposure draft to public consultation. The government conducted targeted consultations only with affected stakeholders, including broadcasters and sports codes.
What about the over three million Australians who experience gambling related harm every year? Was this process open to the parents whose children can still see three gambling ads every hour on a single TV channel under this legislation? What about those people who are still receiving inducements under this legislation?
Will they get their say? The answer is no. The people who live with gambling harm every day were not given a genuine opportunity to engage with this legislation.
There are the parents who come to electorate offices like ours who tell us that their children are addicted to gambling, that gambling is an acute mental health concern for their kids. They don't get a chance to contribute. The health experts who've come out this morning—Mike Daube from Curtin University, Sam Thomas from Deakin—were given three days notice and a 45-minute Zoom briefing to scrutinise the detail of this legislation.
They've called it what it is: a charade. Australia has one of the highest rates of gambling harm in the developed world. Australian families lose their savings.
Relationships break down. People lose their homes, lose their jobs and, in some tragic cases, lose their lives. The government has recognised these harms.
The Peta Murphy led inquiry recognised those harms. The parliament again and again recognises these harms, and that's why process matters. The government can't tell Australians that gambling reform is too important to ignore and that we have to rush it through but it's not important enough to consult on.
This motion asks for something very modest. It simply asks that, before this bill is put to the parliament, all Australians are given the same opportunity that stakeholders have been given behind closed doors, and that is the chance to read the legislation, the chance to consider it and the chance to provide feedback. If the government genuinely believes that this legislation is sound, then public consultation should strengthen its case.
It should solidify its social licence, not weaken it. That's why I'm seeking to suspend standing orders to debate this motion. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): Is the motion seconded?